No more parades : a novel

NUNC COCNOSCO EX PARTE

THOMAS J. BATA LIBRARY
TRENT UNIVERSITY

Digitized by the Internet Archive
in 2019 with funding from
Kahle/Austin Foundation

https://archive.org/details/nomoreparadesnovOOOOford

NO MORE PARADES

No More
Parades

by

FORD MADOX FORD

GROSSER & DUNLAP
Publishers %% New York

by arrangement with A. C. BON1

^0>olf .®S3l\)k TBC

Copyright , 1925, By Albert & Charles Boni, Inc

Printed in the United States of America

To WILLIAM BIRD

My dear Bird, —

I have always held — and I hold as strongly now
as ever — that a novel should have no preface. It
should have no preface for aesthetico-moral reasons,
and because prefatory matter takes away from the
reality of, and therefore damages, a book. A
dedicatory letter is a subterfuge. That subterfuge
I feel forced to adopt, and must take the consequences.

The reason is this: All novels are historical, but
all novels do not deal with such events as get on to
the pages of history. This No More Parades does.
It becomes, therefore, necessary to delimit what, in it,
is offered as, on the author’s responsibility, observed
event.

State, underline and emphasize the fact how you
will it is impossible to get into the heads of even
intelligent public critics the fact that the opinions
of a novelist’s characters as stated in any novel are
not of necessity the opinions of the novelist. It can¬
not be done. How it may be with one’s public one
has no means of knowing. Perhaps they read one with
more generosity and care. Presumably they do, for
they have either spent money on, or taken some trouble
to obtain, the volume.

In this novel the events, such as it treats of, are
vouched for by myself. There was in France, at the
time covered by this novel, an immense base camp,

VI

DEDICATION

unbelievably crowded with men whom we were en¬
gaged in getting up the line, working sometimes day
and night in the effort. That immense army was also
extremely depressed by the idea that those who con¬
trolled it overseas would — I will not use the word
betray, since that implies volition — but “let us down.”
We were oppressed, ordered, counter-ordered, com¬
manded, countermanded, harassed, strafed, denounced
— and, above all, dreadfully worried. The never-end¬
ing sense of worry, in fact, far surpassed any of the
“exigencies of troops actually in contact with enemy
forces,” and that applied not merely to the bases, but
to the whole field of military operations. Unceasing
worry!

We took it out in what may or may not have been
unjust suspicions of the all-powerful ones who had
our lives in their hands — and seemed indifferent enough
to the fact. So this novel recounts what those opin¬
ions were: it does not profess to dictate whether those
opinions were or were not justified. There is, I think,
not one word in it which records any opinions or words
of mine as being my words or opinions. I believe I
may say that, as to the greater part of such public
matters as are here discussed, I have no opinions at
all. After seven or eight years I have been unable to
form any. I present therefore only what I observed or
heard.

Few writers can have engaged themselves as com¬
batants in what, please God, will yet prove to be the
war that ended war, without the intention of aiding
with their writings, if they survived, in bringing about
such a state of mind as should end wars as possibilities.

This obviously is a delicate task. If you overstate
horrors you induce in your reader a state of mind such

DEDICATION

Vll

as, by reaction, causes the horrors to become matters of
indifference. If you overstate heroisms you induce in¬
difference to heroisms — of which the late war produced,
Heaven knows, plenty enough, so that to be indifferent
to them is villainy. Casting about, then, for a medium
through which to view this spectacle, I thought of a
man — by then dead — with whom I had been very in¬
timate and with whom — as with yourself — I had at one
time discussed most things under the sun. He was the
English Tory.

Even then — it must have been in September, 1916,
when I was in a region called the Salient, and I re¬
member the very spot where the idea came to me — I
said to myself: How would all this look in the eyes
of X . . . — already dead, along with all English
Tories? For, as a medium through which to view strug¬
gles that are after all in the end mostly emotional strug¬
gles — since as a rule for every twenty minutes of
actual fighting you were alone with your emotions,
which, being English, you did not express, for at least
a month! — as a medium, what could be better than
the sceptical, not ungenerous, not cold, not unconvin-
cible eyes of an extinct frame of mind? For by the
time of my relative youth when I knew X ... so
intimately, Toryism had gone beyond the region of any
practising political party. It said for a year or two:
A plague on all your houses, and so expired.

To this determination — to use my friend’s eyes as
a medium — I am adhering in this series of books.
Some Do Not — of which this one is not so much a
continuation as a reinforcement— showed you the Tory
at home during war-time; this shows you the Tory
going up the line. If I am vouchsafed health and intel¬
ligence for long enough I propose to show you the same

Vlll

c DEDICATION

man in the line and in process of being re-constructed.

There is nothing more to it: I no more back the
political opinions of General Campion than those of
Sylvia Tietjens, who considered that the World War
was just an excuse for male agapemones; I no more
accept responsibility for the inaccuracies of Tietjens
quoting King’s Regulations than for the inaccuracies
of the general in quoting Henry V. I was roundly
taken to task by the only English critic whose review
of my last book I read — after he had horribly misrep¬
resented the plot of the work at a crucial point — for my
inaccuracy in stating that poor Roger Casement was
shot. As a matter of fact, I had been struck by the
fact that a lady with whom I had been discussing
Casement twice deliberately referred to the shooting of
Casement, and stated that she did so because she could
not bear to think that we had hanged him. In making
therefore a lady — who had loved Casement — refer to
his execution in the book in question, I let her say that
Casement was shot. . . . Indeed, I should prefer to
think that he had been shot, myself. ... Or still more
to think that we had allowed him to escape, or commit
suicide, or be imprisoned during His Majesty’s pleas¬
ure. . . . The critic preferred to rub in the hanging.
It is a matter of relative patriotism.

Whilst we are chipping, I may as well say that
I have been informed that a lively controversy has
raged over the same work in the United States, a New
York critic having stated that I was a disappointed
man intent on giving a lurid picture of present-day
matrimonial conditions in England. I hope I am no
rabid patriot, but I pray to be preserved from the
aspiration of painting any nation’s lurid matrimonial
conditions. The peculiar ones adumbrated in Some

DEDICATION

IX

Do Not were suggested by the fate of a poor fellow
living in a place in the south of France in which I
happened to be stopping when I began the book. His
misfortunes were much those of my central character,
but he drank himself to death, it was said deliberately,
after he had taken his wife back. He came from
Philadelphia.

So, in remembrance of our joint labours and con¬
spiracies, and in token of my admiration for your
beautiful achievements in another art,

I subscribe myself, my dear Bird,

Your humble, obedient and obliged

Paris, 31 October, ’24 —
Guermantes, 25 May, ’25.

F. M. F.

PART I

CHAPTER I

When you came in the space was desultory, rectan¬
gular, warm after the drip of the winter night, and
transfused with a brown-orange dust that was light.
It was shaped like the house a child draws. Three
groups of brown limbs spotted with brass took dim
high-lights from shafts that came from a bucket pierced
with holes, filled with incandescent coke and covered
in with a sheet of iron in the shape of a tunnel. Two
men, as if hierarchically smaller, crouched on the floor
beside the brazier; four, two at each end of the hut,
drooped over tables in attitudes of extreme indiffer¬
ence. From the eaves above the parallelogram of
black that was the doorway fell intermittent drippings
of collected moisture, persistent, with glass-like inter¬
vals of musical sound. The two men squatting on their
heels over the brazier — they had been miners — began
to talk in a low sing-song of dialect, hardly audible.
It went on and on, monotonously, without animation.
It was as if one told the other long, long stories to
which his companion manifested his comprehension or
sympathy with animal grunts. . . .

An immense tea-tray, august, its voice filling the
black circle of the horizon, thundered to the ground.
Numerous pieces of sheet-iron said, “Pack. Pack.
Pack.” In a minute the clay floor of the hut shook,
the drums of ears were pressed inwards, solid noise

2 ^ O ZMORE PARADES

showered about the universe, enormous echoes pushed
these men — to the right, to the left, or down towards
the tables, and crackling like that of flames among vast
underwood became the settled condition of the night.
Catching the light from the brazier as the head leaned
over, the lips of one of the two men on the floor were
incredibly red and full and went on talking and talk¬
ing. ...

The two men on the floor were Welsh miners, of
whom the one came from the Rhondda Valley and was
unmarried; the other, from Pontardulais, had a wife
who kept a laundry, he having given up going under¬
ground just before the war. The two men at the table
to the right of the door were sergeants-major; the one
came from Suffolk and was a time-serving man of six¬
teen years’ seniority as a sergeant in a line regiment.
The other was Canadian of English origin. The two
officers at the other end of the hut were captains, the
one a young regular officer born in Scotland but edu¬
cated at Oxford; the other, nearly middle-aged and
heavy, came from Yorkshire, and was in a militia bat¬
talion. The one runner on the floor was filled with a
passionate rage because the elder officer had refused
him leave to go home and see why his wife, who had
sold their laundry, had not yet received the purchase
money from the buyer; the other was thinking about a
cow. His girl, who worked on a mountainy farm above
Caerphilly, had written to him about a queer cow: a
black-and-white Holstein — surely to goodness a queer
cow. The English sergeant-major was almost tearfully
worried about the enforced lateness of the draft. It
would be twelve midnight before they could march
them off. It was not right to keep men hanging about
like that. The men did not like to be kept waiting,

<^0 OiORE PARADES 3

hanging about. It made them discontented. They did
not like it. He could not see why the depot quarter¬
master could not keep up his stock of candles for the
hooded lamps. The men had no call to be kept waiting,
hanging about. Soon they would have to be having
some supper. Quarter would not like that. He would
grumble fair. Having to indent for suppers. Put his
accounts out, fair, it would. Two thousand nine hun¬
dred and thirty-four suppers at a penny half-penny.
But it was not right to keep the men hanging about
till midnight and no suppers. It made them discon¬
tented and them going up the line for the first time,
poor devils.

The Canadian sergeant-major was worried about a
pig-skin leather pocket-book. He had bought it at the
ordnance depot in the town. He imagined himself
bringing it out on parade, to read out some return or
other to the adjutant. Very smart it would look on
parade, himself standing up straight and tall. But he
could not remember whether he had put it in his kit¬
bag. On himself it was not. He felt in his right and
left breast pockets, his right and left skirt pockets,
in all the pockets of his overcoat that hung from
a nail within reach of his chair. He did not feel
at all certain that the man who acted as his batman
had packed that pocket-book with his kit, though he
declared he had. It was very annoying. His present
wallet, bought in Ontario, was bulging and split. He
did not like to bring it out when Imperial officers asked
for something out of a return. It gave them a false
idea of Canadian troops. Very annoying. He was an
auctioneer. He agreed that at this rate it would be
half-past one before they had the draft down to the
station and entrained. But it was very annoying to

4

DCO DA ORE PARADES

be uncertain whether that pocket-book was packed or
not. He had imagined himself making a good impres¬
sion on parade, standing up straight and tall, taking out
that pocket-book when the adjutant asked for a figure
from one return or the other. He understood their
adjutants w^ere to be Imperial officers now they were
in France. It was very annoying.

An enormous crashing sound said things of an in¬
tolerable intimacy to each of those men, and to all
of them as a body. After its mortal vomiting all the
other sounds appeared a rushing silence, painful to
ears in which the blood audibly coursed. The young
officer stood violently up on his feet and caught at
the complications of his belt hung from a nail. The
elder, across the table, lounging sideways, stretched out
one hand with a downwards movement. He was
aware that the younger man, who was the senior of¬
ficer, was just upon out of his mind. The younger
man, intolerably fatigued, spoke sharp, injurious, in¬
audible words to his companion. The elder spoke
sharp, short words, inaudible too, and continued to
motion downwards with his hand over the table. The
old English sergeant-major said to his junior that Cap¬
tain Mackenzie had one of his mad fits again, but what
he said was inaudible and he knew it. He felt arising
in his motherly heart that yearned at the moment over
his two thousand nine hundred and thirty-four nurs¬
lings a necessity, like a fatigue, to extend the mother¬
liness of his functions to the orfcer. He said to the
Canadian that Captain Mackenzie there going tem¬
porary off his nut was the best orfcer in His Majesty’s
army. And going to make a bleedin’ fool of hisself.
The best orfcer in His Majesty’s army. Not a better.
Careful, smart, brave as an ’ero. And considerate of

5

Of ORE PARADES

his men in the line. You wouldn’t believe. ... He
felt vaguely that it was a fatigue to have to mother
an officer. To a lance-corporal, or a young sergeant,
beginning to go wrong you could mutter wheezy sug¬
gestions through your moustache. But to an officer you
had to say things slantways. Difficult it was. Thank
God they had a trustworthy, cool hand in the other
captain. Old and good, the proverb said.

Dead silence fell.

“Lost the - , they ’a.ve,” the runner from the

Rhondda made his voice startlingly heard. Brilliant
illuminations flickered on hut-gables visible through the
doorway.

“No reason,” his mate from Pontardulais rather
whined in his native sing-song, “why the bleedin’
searchlights, surely to goodness, should light us up

for all the - ’Un planes to see. I want to see

my bleedin’ little ’ut on the bleedin’ Mumbles again,
if they don’t.”

“Not so much swear words, O Nine Morgan,” the
sergeant-major said.

“Now, Dai Morgan, I’m telling you,” 09 Morgan’s
mate continued. “A queer cow it must have been
whatever. Black-and-white Holstein it wass. . . .”

It was as if the younger captain gave up listening
to the conversation. He leant both hands on the
blanket that covered the table. He exclaimed:

“Who the hell are you to give me orders? I’m
your senior. Who the hell . . . Oh, by God, who the
hell . . . Nobody gives me orders . . .” His voice
collapsed weakly in his chest. He felt his nostrils to be
inordinately dilated so that the air pouring into them
was cold. He felt that there was an entangled con¬
spiracy against him, and all round him. He exclaimed:

6

3Y5 0 ZMORE PARADES

“You and your - pimp of a general . . .!” He

desired to cut certain throats with a sharp trench-knife
that he had. That would take the weight off his
chest. The “Sit down ” of the heavy figure lumping
opposite him paralysed his limbs. He felt an unbeliev¬
able hatred. If he could move his hand to get at his
trench-knife . . .

09 Morgan said: “The - ’s name who’s bought

my bleedin’ laundry is Williams. ... If I thought it
was Evans Williams of Castell Goch, I’d desert.”

“Took a hatred for its cawve,” the Rhondda man
said. “And look you, before you could say . . .”
The conversation of orfcers was a thing to which they
neither listened. Officers talked of things that had no
interest. Whatever could possess a cow to take a
hatred of its calf? Up behind Caerphilly on the
mountains? On an autumny morning the whole hill¬
side was covered with spider-webs. They shone down
the sun like spun glass. Overlooked the cow must be.

The young captain leaning over the table began a
long argument as to relative seniority. He argued
with himself, taking both sides in an extraordinarily
rapid gabble. He himself had been gazetted after
Gheluvelt. The other not till a year later. It was
true the other was in permanent command of that
depot, and he himself attached to the unit only for
rations and discipline. But that did not include orders
to sit down. What the hell, he wanted to know, did
the other mean by it? He began to talk, faster than
ever, about a circle. When its circumference came
whole by the disintegration of the atom the world
would come to an end. In the millennium there would
be no giving or taking orders. Of course he obeyed
orders till then.

7

^0 {MORE PARADES

To the elder officer, burdened with the command
of a unit of unreasonable size, with a scratch head¬
quarters of useless subalterns who were continually
being changed, with N.C.O.’s all unwilling to work,
with rank and file nearly all colonials and unused to
doing without things, and with a depot to draw on
that, being old established, felt that it belonged exclu¬
sively to a regular British unit and resented his draw¬
ing anything at all, the practical difficulties of his
everyday life were already sufficient, and he had trou¬
blesome private affairs. He was lately out of hospital;
the sackcloth hut in which he lived, borrowed from the
Depot medical officer who had gone to England on
leave, was suffocatingly hot with the paraffin heater
going, and intolerably cold and damp without it; the
batman whom the M.O. had left in charge of the hut
appeared to be half-witted. These German air-raids
had lately become continuous. The Base was packed
with men, tighter than sardines. Down in the town
you could not move in the streets. Draft-finding units
were commanded to keep their men out of sight as
much as possible. Drafts were to be sent off only at
night. But how could you send off a draft at night
when every ten minutes you had two hours of lights
out for an air-raid? Every man had nine sets of
papers and tags that had to be signed by an officer.
It was quite proper that the poor devils should be
properly documented. But how was it to be done? He
had two thousand nine hundred and ninety-four men
to send off that night and nine times two thousand nine
hundred and ninety-four is twenty-six thousand nine
hundred and forty-six. They would not or could not
let him have a disc-punching machine of his own, but
how was the Depot armourer to be expected to punch

8

D£0 {MORE PARADES

five thousand nine hundred and eighty-eight extra iden¬
tity discs in addition to his regular jobs?

The other captain rambled on in front of him. Tiet-
jens did not like his talk of the circle and the millen¬
nium. You get alarmed, if you have any sense, when
you hear that. It may prove the beginnings of def¬
inite, dangerous lunacy. . . . But he knew nothing
about the fellow. He was too dark and good-looking,
too passionate, probably, to be a good regular officer
on the face of him. But he must be a good officer: he
had the D.S.O. with a clasp, the M.C., and some foreign
ribbon up. And the general said he was: with the
additional odd piece of information that he was a
Vice-Chancellor’s Latin Prize man. . . . He wondered
if General Campion knew what a Vice-Chancellor’s
Latin Prize man was. Probably he did not, but had
just stuck the piece of information into his note as a
barbaric ornament is used by a savage chief. Wanted
to show that he, General Lord Edward Campion, was
a man of culture. There was no knowing where
vanity would not break out.

So this fellow was too dark and good-looking to
be a good officer: yet he was a good officer. That
explained it. The repressions of the passionate drive
them mad. He must have been being sober, dis¬
ciplined, patient, absolutely repressed ever since 1914
— against a background of hell-fire, row, blood, mud,
old tins. . . . And indeed the elder officer had a vision
of the younger as if in a design for a full-length por¬
trait — for some reason with his legs astride, against a
background of tapestry scarlet with fire and more
scarlet with blood. ... He sighed a little; that was
the life of all those several millions. . . .

He seemed to see his draft: two thousand nine

9

£\C0 {MORE PARADES

hundred and ninety-four men he had had command
of for over a couple of months — a long space of time
as that life went — men he and Sergeant-Major Cowley
had looked after with a great deal of tenderness,
superintending their morale, their morals, their feet,
their digestions, their impatiences, their desires for
women. ... He seemed to see them winding away
over a great stretch of country, the head slowly set¬
tling down, as in the Zoo you will see an enormous
serpent slowly sliding down into its water-tank. . . .
Settling down out there, a long way away, up against
that impassable barrier that stretched from the depths
of the ground to the peak of heaven. . . .

Intense dejection: endless muddles: endless follies:
endless villainies. All these men given into the hands
of the most cynically care-free intriguers in long cor¬
ridors who made plots that harrowed the hearts of the
world. All these men toys: all these agonies mere oc¬
casions for picturesque phrases to be put into poli¬
ticians’ speeches without heart or even intelligence.
Hundreds of thousands of men tossed here and there
in that sordid and gigantic mud-brownness of mid¬
winter ... by God, exactly as if they were nuts wil¬
fully picked up and thrown over the shoulder by
magpies. . . . But men. Not just populations. Men
you worried over there. Each man a man with a back¬
bone, knees, breeches, braces, a rifle, a home, pas¬
sions, fornications, drunks, pals, some scheme of the
universe, corns, inherited diseases, a greengrocer’s busi¬
ness, a milk walk, a paper stall, brats, a slut of a
wife. . . . The Men: the Other Ranks! And the
poor - little officers. God help them. Vice-Chan¬

cellor’s Latin Prize men. . . .

This particular poor - Prize man seemed to ob-

10 £^0 [MORE PARADES

ject to noise. They ought to keep the place quiet for
him. . . .

By God, he was perfectly right. That place was
meant for the quiet and orderly preparation of meat
for the shambles. Drafts! A Base is a place where
you meditate: perhaps you should pray: a place wdiere
in peace the Tommies should write their last letters
home and describe ’ow the guns are ’owling ’orribly.

But to pack a million and a half of men into and
round that small town wras like baiting a trap for
rats with a great chunk of rotten meat. The Hun
planes could smell them from a hundred miles away.
They could do more harm there than if they bombed a
quarter of London to pieces. And the air defences
there were a joke: a mad joke. They popped off, thou¬
sands of rounds, from any sort of pieces of ordnance,
like schoolboys bombarding swimming rats with stones.
Obviously your best trained air-defence men would be
round your metropolis. But this was no joke for the
sufferers.

Heavy depression settled down more heavily upon
him. The distrust of the home Cabinet, felt by then
by the greater part of that army, became like physical
pain. These immense sacrifices, this ocean of mental
sufferings, were all undergone to further the private
vanities of men who amidst these hugenesses of land¬
scapes and forces appeared pigmies! It was the
worries of all these wet millions in mud-brown that
worried him. They could die, they could be massacred,
by the quarter million, in shambles. But that they
should be massacred without jauntiness, without con¬
fidence, with depressed brows: without parade. . . .

He knew really nothing about the officer in front
of him. Apparently the fellow had stopped for an

11

5^0 {MORE PARADES

answer to some question. What question? Tietjens
had no idea. He had not been listening. Heavy sil¬
ence settled down on the hut. They just waited. The
fellow said with an intonation of hatred:

“Well, what about it? That’s what I want to
know!”

Tietjens went on reflecting. . . . There were a great
many kinds of madness. What kind was this? The
fellow was not drunk. He talked like a drunkard, but
he was not drunk. In ordering him to sit down Tiet¬
jens had just chanced it. There are madmen whose
momentarily subconscious selves will respond to a
military command as if it were magic. Tietjens re¬
membered having barked: “About . . . turn,” to a
poor little lunatic fellow in some camp at home and
the fellow who had been galloping hotfoot past his
tent, waving a naked bayonet with his pursuers fifty
yards behind, had stopped dead and faced about with
a military stamp like a guardsman. He had tried it
on this lunatic for want of any better expedient. It
had apparently functioned intermittently. He risked
saying:

“What about what?”

The man said as if ironically:

“It seems as if I were not worth listening to by
your high and mightiness. I said: ‘What about my
foul squit of an uncle?’ Your filthy, best friend.”

Tietjens said:

“The general’s your uncle? General Campion?
What’s he done to you?”

The general had sent this fellow down to him with
a note asking him, Tietjens, to keep an eye in his unit
on a very good fellow and an admirable officer. The
chit was in the general’s own writing, and contained

12

cMORE PARADES

the additional information as to Captain Mackenzie’s
scholastic prowess. ... It had struck Tietjens as
queer that the general should take so much trouble
about a casual infantry company commander. How
could the fellow have been brought markedly to his
notice? Of course, Campion was good-natured, like
another man. If a fellow, half dotty, whose record
showed that he was a very good man, was brought to
his notice Campion would do what he could for him.
And Tietjens knew that the general regarded himself
Tietjens, as a heavy, bookish fellow, able reliably to
look after one of his proteges. . . . Probably Campion
imagined that they had no work to do in that unit: they
might become an acting lunatic ward. But if Macken¬
zie was Campion’s nephew the thing was explained.

The lunatic exclaimed:

“Campion, my uncle? Why, he’s yours \”

Tietjens said:

“Oh, no, he isn’t.” The general was not even a
connection of his, but he did happen to be Tietjen’s
godfather and his father’s oldest friend.

The other fellow answered:

“Then it’s damn funny. Damn suspicious. . . .
Why should he be interested in you if he’s not your
filthy uncle? You’re no soldier. . . . You’re no sort of
a soldier. ... A meal sack, that’s what you look like.
. . .” He paused and then went on very quickly:
“They say up at H.Q. that your wife has got hold of
the disgusting general. I didn’t believe it was true.
I didn’t believe you were that sort of fellow. I’ve
heard a lot about you!”

Tietjens laughed at this madness. Then, in the dark
brownness, an intolerable pang went all through his
heavy frame' — the intolerable pang of home news to

3\C0 {MORE PARADES 13

these desperately occupied men, the pain caused by
disasters happening in the darkness and at a distance.
You could do nothing to mitigate them! . . . The ex¬
traordinary beauty of the wife from whom he was
separated — for she was extraordinarily beautiful! —
might well have caused scandals about her to have
penetrated to the general’s headquarters, which was a
sort of family party! Hitherto there had, by the
grace of God, been no scandals. Sylvia Tietjens had
been excruciatingly unfaithful, in the most painful
manner. He could not be certain that the child he
adored was his own. . . . That was not unusual with
extraordinarily beautiful — and cruel! — women. But
she had been haughtily circumspect.

Nevertheless, three months ago, they had parted.
... Or he thought they had parted. Almost com¬
plete blankness had descended upon his home life. She
appeared before him so extraordinarily bright and clear
in the brown darkness that he shuddered: very tall,
very fair, extraordinarily fit and clean even. Thorough¬
bred! In a sheath gown of gold tissue, all illuminated,
and her mass of hair, like gold tissue too, coiled round
and round in plaits over her ears. The features very
clean-cut and thinnish; the teeth white and small; the
breasts small; the arms thin, long and at attention at
her sides. . . . His eyes, when they were tired, had
that trick of reproducing images on their retinas with
that extreme clearness, images sometimes of things
he thought of, sometimes of things merely at the back
of the mind. Well, to-night his eyes were very tired!
She was looking straight before her, with a little inim¬
ical disturbance of the corners of her lips. She had
just thought of a way to hurt terribly his silent person¬
ality. . . . The semi-clearness became a luminous blue,

14

WO [MORE PARADES

like a tiny gothic arch, and passed out of his vision to
the right. . . .

He knew nothing of where Sylvia was. He had
given up looking at the illustrated papers. She had
said she was going into a convent at Birkenhead — but
twice he had seen photographs of her. The first showed
her merely with Lady Fiona Grant, daughter of the
Earl and Countess of Ulleswater — and a Lord Swindon,
talked of as next minister for International Finance —
a new Business Peer. . . . All three walking straight
into the camera in the courtyard of Lord Swindon’s
castle ... all three smiling! ... It announced Mrs.
Christopher Tietjens as having a husband at the front.

The sting had, however, been in the second picture
— in the description of it supplied by the journal!
It showed Sylvia standing in front of a bench in the
park. On the bench in profile there extended himself in
a guffaw of laughter, a young man in a top hat jammed
well on to his head, which was thrown back, his prog¬
nathous jaw pointing upwards. The description
stated that the picture showed Mrs. Christopher Tiet¬
jens, whose husband was in hospital at the Front, tell¬
ing a good story to the son and heir of Lord Brigham!

. . . Another of these pestilential, crooked newspaper¬
owning financial peers . . .

It had struck him for a painful moment whilst look¬
ing at the picture in a dilapidated mess anteroom after
he had come out of hospital — that, considering the de¬
scription, the journal had got its knife into Sylvia. . . .
But the illustrated papers do not get their knives into
society beauties. They are too precious to the photog¬
raphers. . . . Then Sylvia must have supplied the in¬
formation; she desired to cause comment by the con-

&C0 {MORE PARADES IS

trast of her hilarious companions and the statement
that her husband was in hospital at the Front. . . .
It had occurred to him that she was on the warpath.
But he had put it out of his mind. . . . Nevertheless,
brilliant mixture as she was, of the perfectly
straight, perfectly fearless, perfectly reckless, of the
generous, the kind even — and the atrociously cruel,
nothing might suit her better than positively to show
contempt — no, not contempt! cynical hatred — for her
husband, for the war, for public opinion . . . even for
the interest of their child! . . . Yet, it came to him,
the image of her that he had just seen had been the
image of Sylvia, standing at attention, her mouth work¬
ing a little, whilst she read out the figures beside the
bright filament of mercury in a thermometer. . . . The
child had had, with measles, a temperature that, even
then, he did not dare think of. And — it was at his
sister’s in Yorkshire, and the local doctor hadn’t cared
to take the responsibility— he could still feel the
warmth of the little mummy-like body; he had covered
the head and face with a flannel, for he didn’t care
for the sight, and lowered the warm, terrible, fragile
weight into a shining surface of crushed ice in water.
. . . She had stood at attention, the corners of her
mouth moving a little: the thermometer going down as
you watched it. . . . So that she mightn’t want, in
damaging the father, atrociously to damage the child.
. . . For there could not be anything worse for a child
than to have a mother known as a whore. . . .

Sergeant-Major Cowley was standing beside the
table. He said:

“Wouldn’t it be a good thing, sir, to send a runner
to the depot sergeant cook and tell him we’re going
to indent for suppers for the draft? We could send

16

5^0 OtORE PARADES

the other with the 128’s to Quarter. They’re neither
wanted here for the moment.”

The other captain went on incessantly talking —
but about his fabulous uncle, not about Sylvia. It
was difficult for Tietjens to get what he wanted said.
He wanted the second runner sent to the depot quar¬
termaster with a message to the effect that if G.S.
candles for hooded lamps were not provided for the
use of his orderly room by return of bearer he Captain
Tietjens, commanding Number XVI Casual Battalion,
would bring the whole matter of supplies for his bat¬
talion that same night before Base Headquarters. They
were all three talking at once: heavy fatalism over¬
whelmed Tietjens at the thought of the stubbornness
showed by the depot quartermaster. The big unit be¬
side his camp was a weary obstinacy of obstruction.
You would have thought they would have displayed
some eagerness to get his men up into the line. Let
alone that the men were urgently needed, the more
of his men went the more of them stayed behind. Yet
they tried to stop his meat, his groceries, his braces, his
identification discs, his soldiers’ small books. . . .
Every imaginable hindrance, and not even self-inter¬
ested common sense ! . . . He managed also to convey
to Sergeant-Major Cowley that, as everything seemed
to have quieted down, the Canadian sergeant-major
had better go and see if everything was ready for fall¬
ing his draft in. . . . If things remained quiet for
another ten minutes, the “All Clear” might then be
expected. . . . He knew that Sergeant-Major Cowley
wanted to get the Other Ranks out of the hut with
that captain carrying on like that, and he did not see
why the old N.C.O. should not have what he wanted.

It was as if a tender and masculine butler withdrew

17

D£0 £M0RE PARADES

himself. Cowley’s grey walrus moustache and scarlet
cheeks showed for a moment beside the brazier, whis¬
pering at the ears of the runners, a hand kindly on
each of their shoulders. The runners went; the Cana¬
dian went. Sergeant-Major Cowley, his form blocking
the doorway, surveyed the stars. He found it difficult
to realize that the same pinpricks of light through
black manifolding paper as he looked at, looked down
also on his villa and his elderly wife at Isleworth be¬
side the Thames above London. He knew it to be the
fact, yet it was difficult to realize. He imagined the
trams going along the High Street, his missus in one
of them with her supper in a string bag on her stout
knees. The trams lit up and shining. He imagined
her having kippers for supper: ten to one it would
be kippers. Her favourites. His daughter was in the
W.A.A.C.’s by now. She had been cashier to Parks’s,
the big butchers in Brentford, and pretty she had used
to look in the glass case. Like as if it might have
been the British Museum where they had Pharaohs and
others in glass cases. . . . There were threshing ma¬
chines droning away all over the night. He always said
they were like threshing machines. . . . Crikey, if only
they were ! . . . But they might be our own planes, of
course. A good welsh rarebit he had had for tea.

In the hut, the light from the brazier having fewer
limbs on which to fall, a sort of intimacy seemed to
descend, and Tietjens felt himself gain in ability to
deal with his mad friend. Captain Mackenzie1 Tiet¬
jens was not sure that the name was Mackenzie: it had
looked something like it in the general’s hand Captain
Mackenzie was going on about the wrongs he had
suffered at the hands of some fabulous uncle. Appar¬
ently at some important juncture the uncle had refused

18 CO IMORE PARADES

to acknowledge acquaintanceship with the nephew.
From that all the misfortunes of the nephew had arisen.
. . . Suddenly Tietjens said:

“Look here, pull yourself together. Are you mad?
Stark, staring? ... Or only just play-acting?”

The man suddenly sank down on to the bully-beef
case that served for a chair. He stammered a question
as to what — what — what Tietjens meant.

“If you let yourself go,” Tietjens said, “you may
let yourself go a tidy sight farther than you want to.”

“You’re not a mad doctor,” the other said. “It’s
no good your trying to come it over me. I know
all about you. I’ve got an uncle who’s done the dirty
on me— -the dirtiest dirty ever was done on a man. If
it hadn’t been for him I shouldn’t be here now.”

“You talk as if the fellow had sold you into slavery,”
Tietjens said.

“He’s your closest friend,” Mackenzie seemed to
advance as a motive for revenge on Tietjens. “He’s
a friend of the general’s, too. Of your wife’s as well.
He’s in with every one.”

A few desultory, pleasurable “pop-op-ops” sounded
from far overhead to the left.

“They imagine they’ve found the Hun again,” Tiet¬
jens said. “That’s all right; you concentrate on your
uncle. Only don’t exaggerate his importance to the
world. I assure you you are mistaken if you call him
a friend of mine. I have not got a friend in the
world.” He added: “Are you going to mind the
noise? If it is going to get on your nerves you can
walk in a dignified manner to a dugout, now, before it
gets bad. . . .” He called out to Cowley to go and
tell the Canadian sergeant-major to get his men back

Of ORE PARADES 19

into their shelters if they had come out. Until the “All
Clear” went.

Captain Mackenzie sat himself gloomily down at
table.

“Damn it all,” he said, “don’t think I’m afraid of a
little shrapnel. I’ve had two periods solid of fourteen
and nine months in the line. I could have got out on
to the rotten staff. . . . It’s damn it: it’s the beastly
row. . . . Why isn’t one a beastly girl and privileged
to shriek? By God, I’ll get even with some of them
one of these days. . . .”

“Why not shriek?” Tietjens asked. “You can, for
me. No one’s going to doubt your courage here.”

Loud drops of rain spattered down all round the
hut; there was a familiar thud on the ground a yard
or so away, a sharp tearing sound above, a sharper
knock on the table between them. Mackenzie took the
shrapnel bullet that had fallen and turned it round and
round between finger and thumb.

“You think you caught me on the hop just now,”
he said injuriously. “You’re damn clever.”

Two stories down below some one let two hundred-
pound dumb-bells drop on the drawing-room carpet;
all the windows of the house slammed in a race to
get it over; the “pop-op-ops” of the shrapnel went in
wafts all over the air. There was again sudden silence
that was painful, after you had braced yourself up
to bear noise. The runner from the Rhondda came in
with a light step bearing two fat candles. He took
the hooded lamps from Tietjens and began to press
the candles up against the inner springs, snorting
sedulously through his nostrils. . . .

“Nearly got me, one of those candlesticks did,” he

20

0 Of ORE PARADES

said. “Touched my foot as it fell, it did. I did run.
Surely to goodness I did run, cahptn.”

Inside the shrapnel shell was an iron bar with a
flattened, broad nose. When the shell burst in the
air this iron object fell to the ground and, since it
came often from a great height, its fall was dangerous.
The men called these candlesticks, which they much
resembled.

A little ring of light now existed on the puce colour
of the blanket-covered table. Tietjens showed, silver¬
headed, fresh-coloured and bulky; Mackenzie, dark,
revengeful eyes above a prognathous jaw. A very thin
man; thirtyish.

“You can go into the shelter with the Colonial troops,
if you like,” Tietjens said to the runner. The man
answered after a pause, being very slow thinking, that
he preferred to wait for his mate, 09 Morgan what¬
ever.

“They ought to let my orderly room have tin hats,”
Tietjens said to Mackenzie. “I’m damned if they
didn’t take these fellows’ tin hats into store again when
they attached to me for service, and I’m equally
damned if they did not tell me that, if I wanted tin
hats for my own headquarters, I had to write to H.Q.
Canadians, Aldershot, or some such place in order to
get the issue sanctioned.”

“Our headquarters are full of Huns doing the Huns’
work,” Mackenzie said hatefully. “I’d like to get
among them one of these days.”

Tietjens looked with some attention at that young
man with the Rembrandt shadows over his dark face.
He said:

“Do you believe that tripe?”

The young man said:

MORE PARADES 21

“No ... I don’t know that I do. ... I don’t
know what to think. . . . The world’s rotten. . . .”

“Oh, the world’s pretty rotten, all right,” Tietjens
answered. And, in his fatigue of mind caused by having
to attend to innumerable concrete facts like the provid¬
ing of households for a thousand men every few days,
arranging parade states for an extraordinarily mixed
set of troops of all arms with very mixed drills, and
fighting the Assistant Provost Marshal to keep his
own men out of the clutches of the beastly Garrison
Military Police who had got a down on all Canadians,
he felt he had not any curiosity at all left. . . . Yet
he felt vaguely that, at the back of his mind, there
was some reason for trying to cure this young member
of the lower middle classes.

He repeated:

“Yes, the world’s certainly pretty rotten. But that’s
not its particular line of rottenness as far as we are
concerned. . . . We’re tangled up, not because we’ve
got Huns in our orderly rooms, but just because we’ve
got English. That’s the bat in our belfry. . . . That
Hun plane is presumably coming back. Half a dozen
of them. . . .”

The young man, his mind eased by having got off
his chest a confounded lot of semi-nonsensical ravings,
considered the return of the Hun planes with gloomy
indifference. His problem really was: could he stand

the - noise that would probably accompany their

return? He had to get really into his head that this
was an open space to all intents and purposes. There
would not be splinters of stone flying about. He was
ready to be hit by iron, steel, lead, copper, or brass
shell rims, but not by beastly splinters of stone knocked
off house fronts. That consideration had come to him

22 WO {MORE PARADES

during his beastly, his beastly, his infernal, damnable
leave in London, when just such a filthy row had been
going on. . . . Divorce leave! . . . Captain McKech-
nie, second attached ninth Glamorganshires, is granted
leave from the 14/n to the 29/11 for the purpose of
obtaining a divorce. . . . The memory seemed to burst
inside him with the noise of one of those beastly
enormous tin-pot crashes — and it always came when
guns made that particular kind of tin-pot crash: the
two came together, the internal one and the crash out¬
side. He felt that chimney-pots were going to crash on
to his head. You protected yourself by shouting at
damned infernal idiots; if you could out-shout the row
you were safe. . . . That was not sensible, but you
got ease that way! . . .

“In matters of Information they’re not a patch on
us.” Tietjens tried the speech on cautiously, and
concluded: “We know what the Enemy rulers read
in the sealed envelopes beside their breakfast bacon-
and-egg plates.”

It had occurred to him that it was a military duty
to bother himself about the mental equilibrium of this
member of the lower classes. So he talked . . . any
old talk, wearisomely, to keep his mind employed!
Captain Mackenzie was an officer of His Majesty the
King: the property, body and soul, of His Majesty and
His Majesty’s War Office. It was Tietjens’ duty to
preserve this fellow as it was his duty to prevent de¬
terioration in any other piece of the King’s property.
That was implicit in the oath of allegiance. He went
on talking:

The curse of the army, as far as the organization is
concerned, was our imbecile national belief that the
game is more than the player. That was our ruin,

23

{MORE PARADES

mentally, as a nation. We were taught that cricket is
more than clearness of mind, so the blasted quarter¬
master, O.C. Depot Ordnance Stores next door, thought
he had taken a wicket if he refused to serve out tin
hats to their crowd. That’s the Game! And if any
of his, Tietjens’, men were killed, he grinned and said
the game was more than the players of the game. . . .
And of course if he got his bowling average down low
enough he got promotion. There was a quartermaster
in a west country cathedral city who’d got more
D.S.O.’s and combatant medals than anyone on active
service in France, from the sea to Peronne, or when¬
ever our lines ended. His achievement was to have
robbed almost every wretched Tommie in the Western
Command of several weeks’ separation allowance . . .
for the good of the taxpayer, of course. The poor

- Tommies’ kids went without proper food and

clothing, and the Tommies themselves had been in a
state of exasperation and resentment. And nothing
in the world was worse for discipline and the army as a
fighting machine. But there that quartermaster sat in
his office, playing the romantic game over his A.F.B.’s
till the broad buff sheets fairly glowed in the light of
the incandescent gas. “And,” Tietjens concluded, “for
every quarter of a million sterling for which he bowls
out the wretched fighting men he gets a new clasp on
his fourth D.S.O. ribbon. . . . The game, in short, is
more than the players of the game.”

“Oh, damn it!” Captain Mackenzie said. “That’s
what’s made us what we are, isn’t it?”

“It is,” Tietjens answered. “It’s got us into the
hole and it keeps us there.”

Mackenzie remained dispiritedly looking down at
his fingers.

24

WO tMORE PARADES

“You may be wrong or you may be right,” he said.
“It’s contrary to everything that I ever heard. But
I see what you mean.”

“At the beginning of the war,” Tietjens said, “I had
to look in on the War Office, and in a room I found a
fellow . . . What do you think he was doing . . .
what the hell do you think he was doing? He was
devising the ceremonial for the disbanding of a Kitch¬
ener battalion. You can’t say we were not prepared
in one matter at least. . . . Well, the end of the show
was to be: the adjutant would stand the battalion at
ease: the band would play Land of Hope and Glory,
and then the adjutant would say: There will be no
more parades. . . . Don’t you see how symbolical it
was: the band playing Land of Hope and Glory, and
then the adjutant saying There will be no more pa¬
rades? . . . For there won’t. There won’t, there damn
well won’t. . . . No more Hope, no more Glory, no
more parades for you and me any more. Nor for the
country . . . Nor for the world, I dare say . . .
None . . . Gone . . . Na poo, finny! No . . . more
. . . parades!”

“I dare say you’re right,” the other said slowly.
“But, all the same, what am I doing in this show?
I hate soldiering. I hate this whole beastly busi¬
ness. . .

“Then why didn’t you go on the gaudy Staff?”
Tietjens asked. “The gaudy Staff apparently was
yearning to have you. I bet God intended you for
Intelligence: not for the footslogging department.”

The other said wearily:

“I don’t know. I was with the battalion. I wanted
to stop with the battalion. I was intended for the
Foreign Office. My miserable uncle got me hoofed out

{£0 {MORE PARADES 25

of that. I was with the battalion. The C.O. wasn’t
up to much. Someone had to stay with the battalion.
I was not going to do the dirty on it, taking any soft
job. . . .”

“I suppose you speak seven languages and all?”
Tietjens asked.

“Five,” the other said patiently, “and read two
more. And Latin and Greek, of course.”

A man, brown, stiff, with a haughty parade step,
burst into the light. He said with a high wooden
voice:

“ ’Ere’s another bloomin’ casualty.” In the shadow
he appeared to have draped half his face and the
right side of his breast with crape. He gave a high,
rattling laugh. He bent, as if in a stiff bow, woodenly
at his thighs. He pitched, still bent, on to the iron
sheet that covered the brazier, rolled off that and lay on
his back across the legs of the other runner, who had
been crouched beside the brazier. In the bright light it
was as if a whole pail of scarlet paint had been dashed
across the man’s face on the left and his chest.. It
glistened in the firelight — just like fresh paint, moving!
The runner from the Rhondda, pinned down by the
body across his knees, sat with his jaw fallen, resem¬
bling one girl that should be combing the hair of an¬
other recumbent before her. The red viscousness
welled across the floor; you sometimes so see fresh
water bubbling up in sand. It astonished Tietjens to
see that a human body could be so lavish of blood.
He was thinking it was a queer mania that that fellow
should have, that his uncle was a friend of his, Tietjens.
He had no friend in trade, uncle of a fellow who m
ordinary times would probably bring you pairs of
boots on approval. ... He felt as he did when you

26

[ACO {MORE PARADES

patch up a horse that has been badly hurt. He re¬
membered a horse from a cut on whose chest the blood
had streamed down over the off foreleg like a stocking.
A girl had lent him her petticoat to bandage it. Never¬
theless his legs moved slowly and heavily across the
floor.

The heat from the brazier was overpowering on
his bent face. He hoped he would not get his hands
all over blood, because blood is very sticky. It
makes your fingers stick together impotently. But
there might not be any blood in the darkness under
the fellow’s back where he was putting his hand.
There was, however: it was very wet.

The voice of Sergeant-Major Cowley said from out¬
side:

“Bugler, call two sanitary lance-corporals and four
men. Two sanitary corporals and four men.” A
prolonged wailing with interruptions transfused the
night, mournful, resigned, and prolonged.

Tietjens thought that, thank God, someone would
come and relieve him of that job. It was a breathless
affair holding up the corpse with the fire burning his
face. He said to the other runner:

“Get out from under him, damn you! Are you
hurt?” Mackenzie could not get at the body from
the other side because of the brazier. The runner
from under the corpse moved with short sitting shuffles
as if he were getting his legs out from under a sofa.
He was saying:

“Poor - O Nine Morgan! Surely to goodness

I did not recognice the pore - . . . Surely to good¬
ness I did not recognice the pore - ”

Tietjens let the trunk of the body sink slowly to the
floor. He was more gentle than if the man had been

27

MO MORE PARADES

alive. All hell in the way of noise burst about the
world. Tietjen’s thoughts seemed to have to shout to
him between earthquake shocks. He was thinking it
was absurd of that fellow Mackenzie to imagine that
he could know any uncle of his. He saw very vividly
also the face of his girl who was a pacifist. It
worried him not to know what expression her face
would have if she heard of his occupation, now. Dis¬
gust? . . . He was standing with his greasy, sticky
hands held out from the flaps of his tunic. . . . Per¬
haps disgust! ... It was impossible to think in this
row. . . . His very thick soles moved gluily and came
up after suction. ... He remembered he had not sent
a runner along to I.B.D. Orderly Room to see how
many of his crowd would be wanted for garrison fatigue
next day, and this annoyed him acutely. He would
have no end of a job warning the officers he detailed.
They would all be in brothels down in the town by
now. ... He could not work out what the girl’s ex¬
pression would be. He was never to see her again, so
what the hell did it matter? . . . Disgust, probably!

. . . He remembered that he had not looked to see how
Mackenzie was getting on in the noise. He did not
want to see Mackenzie. He was a bore. . . . How
would her face express disgust? He had never seen
her express disgust. She had a perfectly undistin¬
guished face. Fair ... O God, how suddenly his
bowels turned over! . . . Thinking of the girl . . .
The face below him grinned at the roof — the half face!
The nose was there, half the mouth with the teeth
showing in the firelight. ... It was extraordinary how
defined the peaked nose and the serrated teeth were in
that mess . . . The eye looked jauntily at the peak of
the canvas hut-roof. . . . Gone with a grin. Singular

28 ZACO {MORE PARADES

the fellow should have spoken! After he was dead.
He must have been dead when he spoke. It had been
done with the last air automatically going out of the
lungs. A reflex action, probably, in the dead. ... If
he, Tietjens, had given the fellow the leave he wanted
he would be alive now! . . . Well, he was quite right
not to have given the poor devil his leave. He was,
anyhow, better where he was. And so was he, Tietjens.
He had not had a single letter from home since he had
been out this time! Not a single letter. Not even
gossip. Not a bill. Some circulars of old furniture
dealers. They never neglected him! They had got
beyond the sentimental stage at home. Obviously so.

. . . He wondered if his bowels would turn over again
if he thought of the girl. He was gratified that they
had. It showed that he had strong feelings. . . . He
thought about her deliberately. Hard. Nothing hap¬
pened. He thought of her fair, undistinguished, fresh
face that made your heart miss a beat when you
thought about it. His heart missed a beat. Obedient
heart! Like the first primrose. Not any primrose.
The first primrose. Under a bank with the hounds
breaking through the underwood. ... It was senti¬
mental to say Du bist wie eine Blume. . . . Damn the
German language! But that fellow was a Jew. . . .
One should not say that one’s young woman was like
a flower, any flower. Not even to oneself. That was
sentimental. But one might say one special flower.
A man could say that. A man’s job. She smelt like a
primrose when you kissed her. But, damn it, he had
never kissed her. So how did he know how she smelt!
She was a little tranquil, golden spot. He himself must

be a - eunuch. By temperament. That dead fellow

down there must be one, physically. It was probably

29

WO DA ORE PARADES

indecent to think of a corpse as impotent. But he was,
very likely. That would be why his wife had taken up
with the prize-fighter Red Evans Williams of Castell
Goch. If he had given the fellow leave the prize¬
fighter would have smashed him to bits. The police
of Pontardulais had asked that he should not be let
come home — because of the prize-fighter. So he was
better dead. Or perhaps not. Is death better than
discovering that your wife is a whore and being done
in by her cully? Gw ell angau na gwillth, their own
regimental badge bore the words. “ Death is better
than dishonour,y . . . No, not death, angau means
pain. Anguish! Anguish is better than dishonour.
The devil it is! Well, that fellow would have got both.
Anguish and dishonour. Dishonour from his wife and
anguish when the prize-fighter hit him. . . . That was
no doubt why his half-face grinned at the roof. . The
gory side of it had turned brown. Already! Like a
mummy of a Pharaoh, that half looked. . . . He was
born to be a blooming casualty. Either by shell-fire or
by the fist of the prize-fighter. . . . Pontardulais!
Somewhere in Mid- Wales. He had been through it
once in a car, on duty. A long, dull village. Why
should anyone want to gO' back to it? . . .

A tender butler’s voice said beside him: ‘This ain’t
your job, sir. Sorry you had to do it. . . . Lucky it
wasn’t you, sir. . . . This was what done it, I should

say ^

Sergeant-Major Cowley was standing beside him
holding a bit of metal that was heavy in his hand and
like a candlestick. He was aware that a moment before
he had seen the fellow, Mackenzie, bending over the
brazier, putting the sheet of iron back. Careful officer,
Mackenzie. The Huns must not be allowed to see the

30 WO {MORE PARADES

light from the brazier. The edge of the sheet had
gone down on the dead man’s tunic, nipping a bit by
the shoulder. The face had disappeared in shadow.
There were several men’s faces in the doorway.

Tietjens said: “No: I don’t believe that did it.
Something bigger. . . . Say a prize-fighter’s fist. . . .”

Sergeant Cowley said:

“No, no prize-fighter’s fist would have done that,
sir. . . .” And then he added, “Oh, I take your mean¬
ing, sir ... 0 Nine Morgan’s wife, sir. . . .”

Tietjens moved, his feet sticking, towards the ser¬
geant-major’s table. The other runner had placed a
tin basin with water on it. There was a hooded candle
there now, alight; the water shone innocently, a half¬
moon of translucence wavering over the white bottom
of the basin. The runner from Pontardulais said:

“Wash your hands first, sir!”

He said:

“Move a little out of it, cahptn.” He had a rag
in his black hands. Tietjens moved out of the blood
that had run in a thin stream under the table. The
man was on his knees, his hands rubbing Tietjens’
boot welts heavily, with the rags. Tietjens placed his
hands in the innocent water and watched light purple-
scarlet mist diffuse itself over the pale half-moon. The
man below him breathed heavily, sniffing. Tietjens
said:

“Thomas, O Nine Morgan was your mate?”

The man’s face, wrinkled, dark and ape-like, looked
up.

“He was a good pal, pore old - ,” he said. “You

would not like, surely to goodness, to go to mess with
your shoes all bloody.”

£\C0 ZMORE PARADES 31

“If I had given him leave,” Tietjens said, “he would
not be dead now.”

“No, surely not,” One Seven Thomas answered.
“But it is all one. Evans of Castell Goch would surely
to goodness have killed him.”

“So you knew, too, about his wife!” Tietjens said.

“We thocht it wass that,” One Seven Thomas an¬
swered, “or you would have given him leave, cahptn.
You are a good cahptn.”

A sudden sense of the publicity that that life was
came over Tietjens.

“You knew that,” he said. “I wonder what the
hell you fellows don’t know and all!” he thought.
“If anything went wrong with one it would be all over
the command in two days. Thank God, Sylvia can’t
get here!”

The man had risen to his feet. He fetched a towel
of the sergeant-major’s, very white with a red border.

“We know,” he said, “that your honour is a very
goot cahptn. And Captain McKechnie is a fery goot
cahptn. And Captain Prentiss, and Le’tennant Jonce
of Merthyr . . .”

Tietjens said:

“That’ll do. Tell the sergeant-major to give you
a pass to go with your mate to the hospital. Get some¬
one to wash this floor.”

Two men were carrying the remains of 0 Nine
Morgan, the trunk wrapped in a ground sheet. They
carried him in a bandy chair out of the hut. His arms
over his shoulders waved a jocular farewell. There
would be an ambulance stretcher on bicycle wheels
outside.

CHAPTER II

The “All Clear” went at once after that. Its sud¬
denness was something surprising, the mournful-cheer¬
ful, long notes dying regretfully on a night that had
only just gone quiet after the perfectly astonishing
row. The moon had taken it into its head to rise;
begumboiled, jocular and grotesque, it came from be¬
hind the shoulder of one of the hut-covered hills and
sent down the lines of Tietjen’s huts, long, sentimental
rays that converted the place into a slumbering, pas¬
toral settlement. There was no sound that did not
contribute to the silence, little dim lights shone through
the celluloid casements. Of Sergeant-Major Cowley,
his numerals gilded by the moon in the lines of A
Company, Tietjens, who was easing his lungs of coke
vapours for a minute, asked in a voice that hushed
itself in tribute to the moonlight and the now keen
frost:

“Where the deuce is the draft?”

The sergeant-major looked poetically down a ribbon
of whitewashed stones that descended the black down¬
side. Over the next shoulder of hill was the blur of a
hidden conflagration.

“There’s a Hun plane burning down there. In
Twenty-Seven’s parade ground. The draft’s round
that, sir,” he said.

Tietjens said:

“Good God!” in a voice of caustic tolerance. He
added, “I did think we had drilled some discipline
into these blighters in the seven weeks we have had

32

€\ CO {MORE PARADES 33

them. . . . You remember the first time when we had
them on parade and that acting lance-corporal left
the ranks to heave a rock at a sea-gull. . . . And
called you ‘Oi’ Hunkey! . . . Conduct prejudicial to
good order and military discipline? Where’s that
Canadian sergeant-major? Where’s the officer in
charge of the draft?”

Sergeant-Major Cowley said:

“Sergeant-Major Ledoux said it was like a cattle-
stampede on the . . . some river where they come
from. You couldn’t stop them, sir. It was their first
German plane. . . . And they going up the line to¬
night, sir.”

“To-night!” Tietjens exclaimed. “Next Christmas!”

The sergeant-major said:

“Poor boys!” and continued to gaze into the dis¬
tance. “I heard another good one, sir,” he said. “The
answer to the one about the King saluting a private
soldier and he not taking any notice is: when he’s
dead. . . . But if you marched a company into a field
through a gateway and you wanted to get it out again
but you did not know any command in the drill book
for change of direction, what would you do, sir? . . .
You have to get that company out, but you must not
use About Turn, or Right or Left Wheel. . . . There’s
another one, too, about saluting. . . . The officer in
charge of draft is Second-Lieutenant Hotchkiss. . . .
But he’s an A.S.C. officer and turned of sixty. A far¬
rier he is, sir, in civil life. An A.S.C. major was asking
me, sir, very civil, if you could not detail someone else.
He says he doubts if Second-Lieutenant Hitchcock
. . . Hotchkiss could walk as far as the station, let
alone march the men, him not knowing anything but

34

&C O (MORE PARADES

cavalry words of command, if he knows them. He’s
only been in the army a fortnight. . . .”

Tietjens turned from the idyllic scene with the
words:

“I suppose the Canadian sergeant-major and Lieu¬
tenant Hotchkiss are doing what they can to get their
men to come back.”

He re-entered the hut.

Captain Mackenzie in the light of a fantastically
brilliant hurricane lamp appeared to be bathing de¬
jectedly in a surf of coiling papers spread on the table
before him.

“There’s all this bumph,” he said, “just come from
all the headquarters in the bally world.”

Tietjens said cheerfully:

“What’s it all about?” There were, the other an¬
swered, Garrison Headquarter orders, Divisional
orders, Lines of Communication orders, half a dozen
A.F.B.W. two four two’s. A terrific strafe from First
Army forwarded from Garrison H.Q. about the draft’s
not having reached Hazebrouck the day before yester¬
day. Tietjens said:

“Answer them politely to the effect that we had
orders not to send off the draft without its comple¬
ment of four hundred Canadian Railway Service men
—the fellows in furred hoods. They only reached us
from Etaples at five this afternoon without blankets
or ring papers. Or any other papers for the matter
of that.”

Mackenzie was studying with increased gloom a
small buff memorandum slip:

“This appears to be meant for you privately,” he
said. “I can’t make head or tail of it otherwise. It
isn’t marked private.”

35

&{?0 Of ORE PARADES

He tossed the buff slip across the table.

Tietjens sank down bulkily on to his bully-beef
case. He read on the buff at first the initials of the
signature, “E.C. Genl.,” and then: “For God’s sake
keep your wife off me. I will not have skirts round
my H.Q. You are more trouble to me than all the
rest of my command put together.”

Tietjens groaned and sank more deeply on to his
beef case. It was as if an unseen and unsuspected
wild beast had jumped on his neck from an over¬
hanging branch. The sergeant-major at his side said
in his most admirable butler manner:

“Colour-Sergeant Morgan and Lance-Corporal
Trench are obliging us by coming from depot orderly
room to help with the draft’s papers. Why don’t
you and the other officer go and get a bit of dinner,
sir? The colonel and the padre have only just come in
to mess, and I’ve warned the mess orderlies to keep
your food ’ot. . . . Both good men with papers, Mor¬
gan and Trench. We can send the soldiers’ small
books to you at table to sign. . . .”

His feminine solicitude enraged and overwhelmed
Tietjens with blackness. He told the sergeant-major
that he was to go to hell, for he himself was not going
to leave that hut till the draft was moved off. Captain
Mackenzie could do as he pleased. The sergeant-major
told Captain Mackenzie that Captain Tietjens took as
much trouble with his rag-time detachments as if he
had been tne Coldstream adjutant at Chelsea sending
off a draft of Guards. Captain Mackenzie said that
that was why they damn well got their details off four
days faster than any other I.B.D. in that camp. He
would say that much, he added grudgingly and dropped
his head over his papers again. The hut was moving

36

^0 MORE PARADES

slowly up and down before the eyes of Tietjens. He
might have just been kicked in the stomach. That was
how shocks took him. He said to' himself that by God
he must take himself in hand. He grabbed with his
heavy hands at a piece of buff paper and wrote on it
in a column of fat, wet letters

a

b

b

a

a

b

b

a and so on.

He said opprobriously to Captain Mackenzie:

“Do you know what a sonnet is? Give me the
rhymes for a sonnet. That’s the plan of it.”

Mackenzie grumbled:

“Of course I know what a sonnet is. What’s your
game?”

Tietjens said:

“Give me the fourteen end-rhymes of a sonnet and
I’ll write the lines. In under two minutes and a
half.”

Mackenzie said injuriously:

“If you do I’ll turn it into Latin hexameters in three.
In under three minutes.”

They were like men uttering deadly insults the one
to the other. To Tietjens it was as if an immense cat
were parading, fascinated and fatal, round that hut.
He had imagined himself parted from his wife. He
had not heard from his wife since her four-in-the-
morning departure from their flat, months and eterni-

Of ORE PARADES 37

ties ago, with the dawn just showing up the chimney¬
pots of the Georgian roof-trees opposite. In the com¬
plete stillness of dawn he had heard her voice say very
clearly “Paddington” to the chauffeur, and then all the
sparrows in the inn waking up in chorus. . . . Sud¬
denly and appallingly it came into his head that it
might not .have been his wife’s voice that had said
“Paddington,” but her maid’s . . . He was a man who
lived very much by rules of conduct. He had a rule:
Never think on the subject oj a shock at a moment of
shock. The mind was then too sensitized. Subjects
of shock require to be thought all round. If your
mind thinks when it is too sensitized its then con¬
clusions will be too strong. So he exclaimed to
Mackenzie:

“Haven’t you got your rhymes yet? Damn it all!”

Mackenzie grumbled offensively:

“No, I haven’t. It’s more difficult to get rhymes
than to write sonnets. . . . death, moil, coil, breath
. . .” He paused.

“Heath, soil, toil, staggereth,” Tietjens said con¬
temptuously. “That’s your sort of Oxford young
woman’s rhyme. . . . Go on . . . What is it?”

An extremely age-faded and unmilitarv officer was
beside the blanketed table. Tietjens regretted having
spoken to him with ferocity. He had a grotesquely
thin white beard. Positively, white whiskers! He
must have gone through as much of the army as he
had gone through, with those whiskers, because no
superior officer — not even a field-marshal — would have
the heart to tell him to take them off! It was the
measure of his pathos. This ghost-like object was
apologizing for not having been able to keep the draft
in hand: he was requesting his superior to observe that

38 WO CM ORE PARADES

these Colonial troops were without any instincts of
discipline. None at all. Tietjens observed that he had
a blue cross on his right arm where the vaccination
marks are as a rule. He imagined the Canadians talk¬
ing to this hero. . . . The hero began to talk to, Major
Cornwallis of the R. A. S. C.

Tietjens said apropos of nothing:

“Is there a major Cornwallis in the A.S.C.? Good
God!”

The hero protested faintly:

“The R.A.S.C.”

Tietjens said kindly:

“Yes. Yes. The Royal Army Service Corps.”

Obviously his mind until now had regarded his
wife’s “ Paddington ” as the definite farewell between
his life and hers. ... He had imagined her, like
Eurydice, tall, but faint and pale, sinking back into
the shades. . . . “Che faro senz’ Eurydice? . . he
hummed. Absurd! And of course it might have been
only the maid that had spoken. . . . She too had a re¬
markably clear voice. So that the mystic word “Pad¬
dington” might perfectly well be no symbol at all, and
Mrs. Sylvia Tietjens, far from being faint and pale,
might perfectly well be playing the very devil with half
the general officers commanding in chief from White¬
hall to Alaska.

Mackenzie — he was like a damned clerk — was trans¬
ferring the rhymes that he had no doubt at last found,
onto another sheet of paper. Probably he had a
round, copy-book hand. Positively, his tongue followed
his pen round, inside his lips. These were what His
Majesty’s regular officers of to-day were. Good God!
A damned intelligent, dark-looking fellow. Of the
type that is starved in its youth and takes all the

39

CO {MORE PARADES

scholarships that the board schools have to offer. Eyes
too big and black. Like a Malay’s. . . . Any blasted
member of any subject race.

The A.S.C. fellow had been talking positively about
horses. He had offered his services in order to study
the variation of pink-eye that was decimating all the
service horses in the lines. He had been a professor
—positively a professor — in some farriery college or
other. Tietjens said that, in that case, he ought to be
in the A.V.C. — the Royal Army Veterinary Corps per¬
haps it was. The old man said he didn’t know. He
imagined that the R.A.S.C. had wanted his service
for their own horses. . . .

Tietjens said:

“I’ll tell you what to do, Lieutenant Hitchcock. . . .
For, damn it, you’re a stout fellow. . . .” The poor
old fellow, pushing out at that age from the cloisters
of some provincial university . . . He certainly did
not look a horsy sportsman. . . .

The old lieutenant said:

“Hotchkiss . . .” And Tietjens exclaimed:

“Of course it’s Hotchkiss . . . I’ve seen your name
signing a testimonial to Pigg’s Horse Embrocation.
. . . Then if you don’t want to take this draft up the
line . . . Though I’d advise you to . . . It’s merely a
Cook’s Tour to Hazebrouck . . . No, Bailleul . . .
And the sergeant-major will march the men for you
. . . And you will have been in the First Army Lines
and able to tell all your friends you’ve been on active
service at the real front. . .

His mind said to himself while his words went
on . . .

“Then, good God, if Sylvia is actively paying atten¬
tion to my career I shall be the laughing-stock of the

40 3\ CO MORE PARADES

whole army. I was thinking that ten minutes ago!
. . . What’s to be done? What in God’s name is to be
done?” A black crape veil seemed to drop across his
vision . . . Liver . . .

Lieutenant Hotchkiss said with dignity:

“I’m going to the front. I’m going to the real
front. I was passed Ai this morning. I am going to
study the blood reactions of the service horse under
fire.”

“Well, you’re a damn good chap,” Tietjens said.
There was nothing to be done. The amazing activities
of which Sylvia would be capable were just the thing
to send laughter raging like fire through a cachinnating
army. She could not, thank God, get into France: to
that place. But she could make scandals in the papers
that every Tommie read. There was no game of which
she was not capable. That sort of pursuit was called
“pulling the strings of shower-baths” in her circle of
friends. Nothing. Nothing to be done. . . The
beastly hurricane lamp was smoking.

“I’ll tell you what to do,” he said to Lieutenant
Hotchkiss.

Mackenzie had tossed his sheet of rhymes under
his nose. Tietjens read: Death, moil, coil, breath
. . . Saith — “The dirty Cockney!” Oil, soil,
wraith. . . .

“I’d be blowed,” Mackenzie said with a vicious grin,
“if I was going to give you rhymes you had suggested
yourself . . .”

The officer said:

“I don’t of course want to be a nuisance if you’re
busy.”

“It’s no nuisance,” Tietjens said. “It’s what we’re
for. But I’d suggest that now and then you say 'sir’

41

D£0 ZMORE PARADES

to the officer commanding your unit. It sounds well
before the men. . . . Now you go to No. XVI I.B.D.
Mess ante-room . . . The place where they’ve got the
broken bagatelle-table. . .

The voice of Sergeant-Major Cowley exclaimed tran¬
quilly from outside:

“Fall in now. Men who’ve got their ring papers
and identity disks — three of them — on the left. Men
who haven’t, on the right. Any man who has not been
able to draw his blankets tell Colour-Sergeant Morgan.
Don’t forget. You won’t get any where you’re going.
Any man wTho hasn’t made his will in his Soldier’s
Small Book or elsewhere and wants to, to consult Cap¬
tain Tietjens. Any man who wants to draw money,
ask Captain Mackenzie. Any R.C. who wants to go
to confession after he has got his papers signed can
find the R.C. padre in the fourth hut from the left in
the Main Line from here. . . . And damn kind it is of
his reverence to put himself out for a set of damn blink¬
ing mustard-faced red herrings like you who can’t keep
from running away to the first baby’s bonfire you sees.
You’ll be running the other way before you’re a week
older, though what good they as asks for you thinks
you’ll be out there God knows. You look like a squad
of infants’ companions from a Wesleyan Sunday school.
That’s what you look like and, thank God, we’ve got
a Navy.”

Under cover of his voice Tietjens had been writing:

“Now we affront the grinning chops of Death,” and
saying to Lieutenant Hotchkiss: “In the I.B.D. ante¬
room you’ll find any number of dirty little squits of
Glamorganshires drinking themselves blind over La Vie
Parisienne. . . . Ask any one of them you like. . .

He wrote:

42

mORE PARADES

“And in between our carcass and the moil
Of marts and cities, toil and moil and coil. . .”

“You think this difficult!” he said to Mackenzie.
“Why, you’ve written a whole undertaker’s mortuary
ode in the rhymes alone,” and wTent on to Hotchkiss:
“Ask anyone you like as long as he’s a P.B. officer.
. . . Do you know what P.B. means? No, not Poor

B - y, Permanent Base. Unfit ... If he’d like to

take a draft to Bailleul.”

The hut was filling with devious, slow, ungainly men
in yellow-brown. Their feet shuffled desultorily; they
lumped dull canvas bags along the floor and held in
unliterary hands small open books that they dropped
from time to time. From outside came a continuing,
swelling and descending chant of voices; at times it
would seem to be all one laugh, at times one menace,
then the motives mingled fugally, like the sea on a
beach of large stones. It seemed to Tietjens suddenly
extraordinary how shut in on oneself one was in this
life. ... He sat scribbling fast: “Old Spectre blows
a cold protecting breath . . . Vanity of vanities, the
preacher saitli . . . No more parades, Not any more,
no oil . . .” He was telling Hotchkiss, who was ob¬
viously shy of approaching the Glamorganshires in their
ante-room . . . “Unambergris’d our limbs in the naked
soil . . .” that he did not suppose any P.B. officer
would object. They would go on a beanfeast up into
the giddy line in a first-class carriage and get draft
leave and command pay too probably . . . “No funeral
struments cast before our wraiths . . .” If any fellow
does object, you just send his name to me and I will
damn well shove it into extra orders. . . .

The advanced wave of the brown tide of men was
already at his feet. The extraordinary complications

43

D£0 {MORE PARADES

of even the simplest lives; ... A fellow was beside
him . . . Private Logan, formerly, of all queer things
for a Canadian private, a trooper of the Inniskillings:
owner, of all queer things, of a milk- walk or a dairy
farm, outside Sydney, which is in Australia ... A
man of sentimental complications, jauntiness as became
an Inniskilling, a Cockney accent such as ornaments
the inhabitants of Sydney, and a complete distrust of
lawyers. On the other hand, with the completest trust
in Tietjens. Over his shoulder — he was blonde, up¬
right, with his numerals shining like gold, looked a
lumpish, caje-au-lait, eagle-nosed countenance: a half-
caste member of one of the Six Nations, who had been
a doctor’s errand boy in Quebec ... He had his
troubles, but was difficult to understand. Behind him,
very black-avised with a high colour, truculent eyes
and an Irish accent, was a graduate of McGill Uni¬
versity who had been a teacher of languages in Tokio
and had some sort of claim against the Japanese Gov¬
ernment . . . And faces, two and two, in a coil round
the hut . . . Like dust: like a cloud of dust that would
approach and overwhelm a landscape: every one with
preposterous troubles and anxieties, even if they did
not overwhelm you personally with them . . . Brown
dust . . .

He kept the Inniskilling waiting while he scribbled
the rapid sestet to his sonnet which ought to make
a little plainer what it all meant. Of course the general
idea was that, when you got into the line or near it,
there was no room for swank: typified by expensive
funerals. As you might say: No flowers by com¬
pulsion . . . No more parades! ... He had also to
explain, while he did it, to the heroic veterinary sexagen-

44

WO fMORE PARADES

arian that he need not feel shy about going into the
Glamorganshire Mess on a man-catching expedition.
The Glamorganshires were bound to lend him, Tiet-
jens, P.B. officers if they had not got other jobs. Lieu¬
tenant Hotchkiss could speak to Colonel Johnson,
whom he would find in the mess and quite good-
natured over his dinner. A pleasant and sympathetic
old gentleman who would appreciate Hotchkiss’s desire
not to go superfluously into the line. Hotchkiss could
offer to take a look at the colonel’s charger: a Hun
horse, captured on the Marne and called Schomburg,
that was off its feed. ... He added: “But don’t do
anything professional to Schomburg. I ride him my¬
self!”

He threw his sonnet across to Mackenzie, who with
a background of huddled khaki limbs and anxious
faces was himself anxiously counting out French cur¬
rency notes and dubious-looking tokens . . . What
the deuce did men want to draw money — sometimes
quite large sums of money, the Canadians being paid
in dollars converted into local coins — when in an hour
or so they would be going up? But they always did
and their accounts were always in an incredibly en¬
tangled state. Mackenzie might well look worried.
As like as not he might find himself a fiver or more
down at the end of the evening for unauthorized pay¬
ments. If he had only his pay and an extravagant
wife to keep, that might well put the wind up him.
But that was his funeral. He told Lieutenant Hotch¬
kiss to come and have a chat with him in his hut, the
one next the mess. About horses. He knew a little
about horse-illnesses himself. Only empirically, of
course.

Mackenzie was looking at his watch.

&C0 Of ORE PARADES 45

“You took two minutes and eleven seconds,” he
said. “I’ll take it for granted it’s a sonnet ... I have
not read it because I can’t turn it into Latin here . . .
I haven’t got your knack of doing eleven things at
once. . . .”

A man with a worried face, encumbered by a bundle
and a small book, was studying figures at Mackenzie’s
elbow. He interrupted Mackenzie in a high American
voice to say that he had never drawn fourteen dollars
seventy-five cents in Thrasna Barracks, Aldershot.

Mackenzie said to Tietjens:

“You understand. I have not read your sonnet. I
shall turn it into Latin in the mess: in the time stipu¬
lated. I don’t want you to think I’ve read it and taken
time to think about it.”

The man beside him said:

“When I went to the Canadian Agent, Strand, Lon¬
don, his office was shut up . .

Mackenzie said with white fury:

“How much service have you got ? Don’t you know
better than to interrupt an officer when he is talking.
You must settle your own figures with your own con¬
founded Colonial paymaster. I’ve sixteen dollars thirty
cents here for you. Will you take them or leave them?”

Tietjens said:

“I know that man’s case. Turn him over to me.
It isn’t complicated. He’s got his paymaster’s cheque,
but doesn’t know how to cash it and of course they
won’t give him another. . . .”

The man with slow, broad, brown features looked
from one to the other officer’s face and back again with
a keen black-eyed scrutiny as if he were looking into
a wind and dazed by the light. He began a long story
of how he owed Fat-Eared Bill fifty dollars lost at

46 mORE PARADES

House. He was perhaps half-Chinese, half-Finn. He
continued to talk, being in a state of great anxiety
about his money. Tietjens addressed himself to the
cases of the Sydney Inniskilling ex-trooper and the
McGill graduate who had suffered at the hands of the
Japanese Educational Ministry. It made altogether a
complicated effect. “You would say,” Tietjens said to
himself, “that, all together, it ought to be enough to
take my mind up.”

The upright trooper had a very complicated senti¬
mental history. It was difficult to advise him before
his fellows. He, however, felt no diffidence. He dis¬
cussed the points of the girl called Rosie whom he had
followed from Sydney to British Columbia, of the girl
called Gwen with whom he had taken up in Aberyst¬
wyth, of the woman called Mrs. Hosier with whom he
had lived maritally, on a sleeping-out pass, at Berwick
St. James, near Salisbury Plain. Through the continu¬
ing voice of the half-caste Chinaman he discussed them
with a large tolerance, explaining that he -wanted them
all to have a bit, as a souvenir, if he happened to stop
one out there. Tietjens handed him the draft of a will
he had had written out for him, asked him to read
it attentively and copy it with his own hand into his
soldier’s small book. Then Tietjens would witness it
for him. He said:

“Do you think this will make my old woman in
Sydney part? I guess it won’t. She’s a sticker, sir.
A regular July bur, God bless her.” The McGill
graduate was beginning already to introduce a further
complication into his story of complications with the
Japanese Government. It appeared that in addition
to his scholastic performances he had invested a little
money in a mineral water spring near Kobe, the water,

47

&C0 iMORE PARADES

bottled, being exported to San Francisco. Apparently
his company had been indulging in irregularities accord¬
ing to Japanese law, but a pure French Canadian, who
had experienced some difficulties in obtaining his bap¬
tismal certificate from a mission somewhere in the
direction of the Klondike, was allowed by Tietjens to
interrupt the story of the graduate; and several men
without complications, but anxious to get their papers
signed so as to write last letters home before the draft
moved, overflowed across Tietjen’s table. . . .

The tobacco smoke from the pipes of the N.C.O.’s
at the other end of the room hung, opalescent, beneath
the wire cages of the brilliant hurricane lamps hung
over each table; buttons and numerals gleamed in the
air that the universal khaki tinge of the limbs seemed
to turn brown, as if into a gas of dust. Nasal voices,
throat voices, drawling voices, melted into a rustle so
that the occasional high, sing-song profanity of a
Welsh N.C.O.: Why the hell haffn’t you got your 124?

Why the - hell haffn’t you got your 124? Don’t

you know you haff to haff your bleedin’ i2 4’s? seemed
to wail tragically through a silence . . . The evening
wore on and on. It astounded Tietjens, looking at
one time at his watch to discover that it was only 21
hrs. 19. He seemed to have been thinking drowsily
of his own affairs for ten hours. . . . For, in the end,
these were his own affairs. . . . Money, women, testa¬
mentary bothers. Each of these complications from
over the Atlantic and round the world were his own
troubles: a world in labour: an army being moved
off in the night. Shoved off. Anyhow. And over
the top. A lateral section of the world. . . .

He had happened to glance at the medical history
of a man beside him and noticed that he had been

48 ZA CO MORE PARADES

described as Ci. ... It was obviously a slip of the
pen on the part of the Medical Board, or one of their
orderlies. He had written C instead of A. The man
was Pte. 197394 Thomas Johnson, a shining-faced lump
of beef, an agricultural odd jobman from British
Columbia where he had worked on the immense estates
of Sylvia Tietjens’ portentous ducal second cousin
Rugeley. It was a double annoyance. Tietjens had
not wanted to be reminded of his wife’s second cousin,
because he had not wanted to be reminded of his wife.
He had determined to give his thoughts a field day on
that subject when he got warm into his flea-bag in his
hut that smelt of paraffin whilst the canvas walls
crackled with frost and the moon shone. ... He would
think of Sylvia beneath the moon. He was determined
not to now! But 197394 Pte. Johnson, Thomas, was
otherwise a nuisance and Tietjens cursed himself for
having glanced at the man’s medical history. If this
preposterous yokel was C3 he could not go on a draft
. . . Ci rather! It was all the same. That would
mean finding another man to make up the strength and
that would drive Sergeant-Major Cowley out of his
mind. He looked up towards the ingenuous, protrud¬
ing, shining, liquid, bottle-blue eyes of Thomas John¬
son. . . . The fellow had never had an illness. He
could not have had an illness — except from a surfeit
of cold, fat, boiled pork — and for that you would give
him a horse’s blue ball and drench which, ten to one,
would not remove the cause of the belly-ache. . . .

His eyes met the non-committal glance of a dark,
gentlemanly thin fellow with a strikingly scarlet hat¬
band, a lot of gilt about his khaki and little strips of
steel chain-armour on his shoulders. . . . Levin . . .
Colonel Levin, G.S.O. II, or something, attached to

49

WO {MORE PARADES

General Lord Edward Campion. . . . How the hell did
fellows get into these intimacies of commanders of
units and their men? Swimming in like fishes into the

brown air of a tank and there at your elbow . . . -

spies! . . . The men had all been called to attention
and stood like gasping codfish. The ever-watchful
Sergeant-Major Cowley had drifted to his, Tietjens’,
elbow. You protect your orfcers from the gawdy Staff
as you protect your infant daughters in lambswool
from draughts. The dark, bright, cheerful staffwallah
said with a slight lisp:

“Busy, I see.” He might have been standing there
for a century and have a century of the battalion
headquarters’ time to waste like that. “What draft is
this?”

Sergeant-Major Cowley, always ready in case his
orfcer should not know the name of his unit or his
own name, said:

“No. 1 6 I.B.D. Canadian First Division Casual
Number Four Draft, sir.”

Colonel Levin let air lispingly out between his teeth.

“No. 1 6 Draft not off yet . . . Dear, dear! Dear,
dear! ... We shall be strafed to hell by First Army.
. . .” He used the word hell as if he had first wrapped
it in eau-de-cologned cotton-wadding.

Tietjens, on his feet, knew this fellow very well:
a fellow who had been a very bad Society water¬
colour painter of good family on the mother’s side:
hence the cavalry gadgets on his shoulders. Would
it then be good . . . say good taste to explode? He
let the sergeant-major do it. Sergeant-Major Cowley
was of the type of N.C.O. who carried weight because
he knew ten times as much about his job as any Staff
officer. The sergeant-major explained that it had been

50 WO MORE PARADES

impossible to get off the draft earlier. The colonel
said:

“But surely, sergeant-majah . .

The sergeant-major, now a deferential shopwalker
in a lady’s store, pointed out that they had had urgent
instructions not to send up the draft without the four
hundred Canadian Railway Service men who were to
come from Etaples. These men had only arrived that
evening at 5.30 . . . at the railway station. Marching
them up had taken three-quarters of an hour. The
colonel said:

“But surely, sergeant-majah . . .”

Old Cowley might as well have said “madam” as
“sir” to the red hat-band. . . . The four hundred had
come with only what they stood up in. The unit had
had to wangle everything: boots, blankets, tooth¬
brushes, braces, rifles, iron-rations, identity disks out of
the depot store. And it was now only twenty-one
twenty. . . . Cowley permitted his commanding officer
at this point to say:

“You must understand that we work in circumstances
of extreme difficulty, sir. . . .”

The graceful colonel was lost in an absent contem¬
plation of his perfectly elegant knees.

“I know, of course. . . .” he lisped. “Very diffi¬
cult . . .” He brightened up to add: “But you must
admit you’re unfortunate. . . . You must admit that.

. . .” The weight settled, however, again on his
mind.

Tietjens said:

“Not, I suppose, sir, any more unfortunate than
any other unit working under a dual control for sup¬
plies. . . .”

The colonel said:

5\C0 mo RE PARADES 51

“ What’s that? Dual . . . Ah, I see you’re there,
Mackenzie. . . . Feeling well . . . feeling fit, eh?”

The whole hut stood silent. His anger at the waste
of time made Tietjens say:

“If you understand, sir, we are a unit whose principal
purpose is drawing things to equip drafts with. . . .”
This fellow was delaying them atrociously. He was
brushing his knees with a handkerchief! “I’ve had,”
Tietjens said, “a man killed on my hands this after¬
noon because we have to draw tin-hats for my orderly
room from Dublin on an A.F.B. Canadian from Aider-
shot. . . . Killed here. . . . We’ve only just mopped
up the blood from where you’re standing. . . .”

The cavalry colonel exclaimed:

“Oh, good gracious me! . . .” jumped a little and
examined his beautiful, shining, knee-high aircraft
boots. “Killed! .... Here! . . . But there’ll have
to be a court of inquiry. . . . You certainly are most
unfortunate, Captain Tietjens. . . . Always these
mysterious . . . Why wasn’t your man in a dug-out?

. . . Most unfortunate. . . . We cannot have casual¬
ties among the Colonial troops. . . . Troops from the
Dominions, I mean. . . .”

Tietjens said grimly:

“The man was from Pontardulais . . . not from any
Dominion. . . . One of my orderly room. . . . We
are forbidden on pain of court martial to let any but
Dominion Expeditionary Force men go into the dug-
outs. . . . My Canadians were all there. . . . It’s an
A.C.I. local of the eleventh of November. . . .”

The Staff officer said:

“It makes, of course, a difference! . . . Only a
Glamorganshire? You say . . . Oh, well. . . . But
these mysterious . . .”

52 WO {MORE PARADES

He exclaimed, with the force of an explosion, and
the relief:

“Look here . . . can you spare, possibly, ten . . .
twenty . . . eh . . . minutes? . . . It’s not exactly a
service matter ... so per . . .”

Tietjens exclaimed:

“You see how we’re situated, colonel . . .” and, like
one sowing grass seed on a lawn, extended both hands
over his papers and towards his men. . . . He was
choking with rage. Colonel Levin had, under the
chaperonage of an English dowager, who ran a choc¬
olate store down on the quays in Rouen, a little French
piece to whom he was quite seriously engaged. In the
most naive manner. And the young woman, fantas¬
tically jealous, managed to make endless insults to her¬
self out of her almost too handsome colonel’s barbaric
French. It was an idyll, but it drove the colonel
frantic. At such times Levin would consult Tietjens,
who passed for a man of brains and a French scholar
as to really nicely turned compliments in a difficult
language. . . . And as to how you explained that it
was necessary for a G.S.O. II, or whatever the colonel
was, to be seen quite frequently in the company of
very handsome V.A.D.’s and female organizers of all
arms ... It was the sort of silliness as to which no
gentleman ought to be consulted. . . . And here was
Levin with the familiar feminine-agonized wrinkle on
his bronzed-alabaster brow. . . . Like a beastly sol¬
dier-man out of a revue. Why didn’t the ass burst
into gesture and a throaty tenor. . . .

Sergeant-Major Cowley naturally saved the situation.
Just as Tietjens was as near saying Go to hell as you
can be to your remarkably senior officer on parade, the

{MORE PARADES S3

sergeant-major, now a very important solicitor’s most
confidential clerk, began whispering to the colonel. . . .

“The captain might as well take a spell as not. . . .
We’re through with all the men except the Canadian
Railway batch, and they can’t be issued with blankets
not for half an hour . . . not for three-quarters. If
then! It depends if our runner can find where Quart¬
er’s lance-corporal is having his supper, to issue them.

. . .” The sergeant-major had inserted that last speech
deftly. The Staff officer, with a vague reminiscence of
his regimental days, exclaimed:

“Damn it! ... I wonder you don’t break into the
depot blanket store and take what you want. . .

The sergeant-major, becoming Simon Pure, ex¬
claimed:

“Oh, no, sir, we could never do that, sir. . .

“But the confounded men are urgently needed in
the line,” Colonel Levin said. “Damn it, it’s touch
and go ! ... We’re rushing . . .” He appreciated the
fact again that he was on the gawdy Staff, and that the
sergeant-major and Tietjens, playing like left backs
into each other’s hands, had trickily let him in.

“We can only pray, sir,” the sergeant-major said,
“that these ’ere bloomin’ ’Uns has got quartermasters
and depots and issuing departments, same as our¬
selves.” He lowered his voice into a husky whisper.
“Besides, sir, there’s a rumour . . . round the tele¬
phone in depot orderly room . . . that there’s a W.O.
order at ’Edquarters . . . countermanding this and
other drafts. . . .”

Colonel Levin said: “Oh, my God!” and consterna¬
tion rushed upon both him and Tietjens. The frozen
ditches, in the night, out there; the agonized waiting
for men; the weight upon the mind like a weight upon

54 D£0 IMORE PARADES

the brows; the imminent sense of approaching unthink¬
ableness on the right or the left, according as you looked
up or down the trench; the solid protecting .earth of
the parapet then turns into pierced mist . . . and no
reliefs coming from here. . . . The men up there think¬
ing naively that they were coming, and they not com¬
ing. Why not? Good God, why not? Mackenzie
said:

“Poor - old Bird . . . His crowd had been in

eleven weeks last Wednesday. . . . About all they
could stick. . . .”

“They’ll have to stick a damn lot more,” Colonel
Levin said. “I’d like to get at some of the brutes.
. . It was at that date the settled conviction of
His Majesty’s Expeditionary Force that the army in
the field was the tool of politicians and civilians. In
moments of routine that cloud dissipated itself lightly:
when news of ill omen arrived it settled down again
heavily like a cloud of black gas. You hung your
head impotently. . . .

“So that,” the sergeant-major said cheerfully, “the
captain could very well spare half an hour to get his
dinner. Or for anything else. . . Apart from the
domestic desire that Tietjens’ digestion should not
suffer from irregular meals he had the professional
conviction that for his captain to be in intimate private
converse with a member of the gawdy Staff was good
for the unit. ... “I suppose, sir,” he added valedic-
torily to Tietjens, “I’d better arrange to put this draft,
and the nine hundred men that came in this afternoon
to replace them, twenty in a tent. . . . It’s lucky we
didn’t strike them. . . .”

Tietjens and the colonel began to push men out of
their way, going towards the door. The Inniskilling-

MORE PARADES 55

Canadian, a small open brown book, extended depre-
catingly stood, modestly obtrusive, just beside the door¬
post. Catching avidly at Tietjens’ “Eh?” he said:

“You’d got the names of the girls wrong in your'
copy, sir. It was Gwen Lewis I had a child by in
Aberystwyth that I wanted to have the lease of the
cottage and the ten bob a week. Mrs. Hosier that
I lived with in Berwick St. James, she was only to have
five guineas for a soovneer. . . . I’ve took the liberty
of changing the names back again. . . .”

Tietjens grabbed the book from him, and bending
down at the sergeant-major’s table scrawled his signa¬
ture on the bluish page. He thrust the book back at
the man and said:

“There . . . fall out.” The man’s face shone. He
exclaimed:

“Thank you, sir. Thank you kindly, captain. . . .
I wanted to get off and go to confession. I did bad.
. . .” The McGill graduate with his arrogant black
moustache put himself in the way as Tietjens struggled
into his British warm.

“You won’t forget, sir, . . he began.

Tietjens said:

“Damn you, I’ve told you I won’t forget. I never
forget. You instructed the ignorant Jap in Asaki,
but the educational authority is in Tokio’. And your
flagitious mineral-water company had their head¬
quarters at the Tan Sen spring near Kobe. ... Is
that right? Well, I’ll do my best for you.”

They walked in silence through the groups of men
that hung round the orderly room door and gleamed
in the moonlight. In the broad country street of the
main line of the camp Colonel Levin began to mutter
between his teeth:

56

{MORE PARADES

“You take enough trouble with your beastly crowd
... a, whole lot of trouble. . . . Yet . .

“Well, what’s the matter with us?” Tietjens said.
“We get our drafts ready in thirty-six hours less than
any other unit in this command.”

“I know you do,” the other conceded. “It’s only
all these mysterious rows. Now . .

Tietjens said quickly:

“Do you mind my asking: Are we still on parade?

Is this a strafe from General Campion as to the way
I command my unit?”

The other conceded quite as quickly and much more
worriedly:

“God forbid.” He added more quickly still: “Old
bean!” and prepared to tuck his wrist under Tietjens’
elbow. Tietjens, however, continued to face the fellow.
He was really in a temper.

“Then tell me,” he said, “how the deuce you can
manage to do without an overcoat in this weather?”
If only he could get the chap off the topics of his
mysterious rows they might drift to the matter that
had brought him up there on that bitter night when
he should be sitting over a good wood fire philander¬
ing with Mile Nanette de Bailly. He sank his neck
deeper into the sheepskin collar of his British warm.
The other, slim, was with all his badges, ribands and
mail, shining darkly in a cold that set all Tietjens’
teeth chattering like porcelain. Levin became mo¬
mentarily animated:

“You should do as I do. . . . Regular hours . . .
lots of exercise . . . horse exercise. ... I do P.T. 1
every morning at the open window of my room . . .
hardening. . . .”

“It must be very gratifying for the ladies in the i

<^0 {MORE PARADES 57

rooms facing yours,” Tietjens said grimly. “Is that
what’s the matter with Mile Nanette, now? ... I
haven’t got time for proper exercise. . . .”

“Good gracious, no,” the colonel said. He now
tucked his hand firmly under Tietjens’ arm and began
to work him towards the left hand of the road: in the
direction leading out of the camp. Tietjens worked their
steps as firmly towards the right and they leant one
against the other. “In fact, old bean,” the colonel
said, “Campy is working so hard to get the command
of a fighting army — though he’s indispensable here — -
that we might pack up bag and baggage any day. . . .
That is what has made Nanette see reason. . . .”

“Then what am I doing in this show?” Tietjens
asked. But Colonel Levin continued blissfully:

“In fact I’ve got her almost practically for certain
to promise that next week ... or the week after next
at latest . . . she’ll . . . damn it, she’ll name the
happy day.”

Tietjens said:

“Good hunting! . . . How splendidly Victorian!”

“That’s, damn it,” the colonel exclaimed manfully,
“what I say myself. . . . Victorian is what it is. . . .
All these marriage settlements. . . . And what is it
. . . Droits du Seigneur? . . . And notaires . . .
And the Count, having his say . . . And the Mar¬
chioness . . . And two old grand aunts . . . But . . .
Hoopla! . . .” He executed with his gloved right
thumb in the moonlight a rapid pirouette . . . “Next
week ... or at least the week after . . .” His voice
suddenly dropped.

“At least,” he wavered, “that was what it was at
lunch-time. . . . Since then . . . something hap¬
pened. . . .”

58

&C0 €MORE PARADES

“You’ve not been caught in bed with a V.A.D.?”
Tietjens asked.

The colonel mumbled:

“No . . . not in bed. . . . Not with a V.A.D. . . .
Oh, damn it, at the railway station. . . . With . . .
The general sent me down to meet her . . . and
Nanny of course was seeing off her grandmother, the
Duchesse . . . The giddy cut she handed me
out. . .

Tietjens became coldly furious.

“Then it was over one of your beastly imbecile rows
with Miss de Bailly that you got me out here,” he
exclaimed. “Do you mind going down with me to¬
wards the I.B.D. headquarters? Your final orders
may have come in there. The sappers won’t let me
have a telephone, so I have to look in there the last
thing. . . .” He felt a yearning towards rooms in
huts, warmed by coke-stoves and electrically lit, with
acting lance-corporals bending over A.F.B.’s on a
background of deal pigeon-holes filled with returns on
buff and blue paper. You got quiet and engrossment
there. It was a queer thing: the only place where he,
Christopher Tietjens of Groby, could be absently satis¬
fied was in some orderly room or other. The only
place in the world. . . . And why? It was a queer
thing. . . .

But not queer, really. It was a matter of inevitable
selection if you came to think it out. An acting
orderly-room lance-corporal was selected for his pen¬
manship, his power of elementary figuring, his trust¬
worthiness amongst innumerable figures and mes¬
sages, his dependability. For this he differed a hair’s
breadth in rank from the rank and file. A hairbreadth
that was to him the difference between life and death.

3\C0 {MORE PARADES 59

For, if he proved not to be dependable, back he went
* returned to duty ! As long as he was dependable he
slept under a table in a warm room, his toilette arrange¬
ments and washing in a bully-beef case near his head,
a billy full of tea always stewing for him on an always
burning stove. ... A paradise! ... No! Not a
paradise: the paradise of the Other Ranks! ... He
might be awakened at one in the morning. Miles
away the enemy might be beginning a strafe. . . .
He would roll out from among the blankets under the
table amongst the legs of hurrying N.C.O.’s and
officers, the telephone going like hell. ... He would
have to manifold innumerable short orders on buff
slips, on a typewriter. ... A bore to be awakened at
one in the morning, but not unexciting: the enemy put¬
ting up a tremendous barrage in front of the village of
Dranoutre: the whole nineteenth division to be moved
into support along the Bailleul-Nieppe road. In
case . . .

Tietjens considered the sleeping army. . . . That
country village under the white moon, all of sack¬
cloth sides, celluloid windows, forty men to a hut . . .
That slumbering Arcadia was one of . . . how many?
Thirty-seven thousand five hundred, say for a million
and a half of men. . . . But there were probably more
than a million and a half in that base. . . . Well,
round the slumbering Arcadias were the fringes of vir-
ginly glimmering tents. . . . Fourteen men to a tent.

. . . For a million. . . . Seventy-one thousand four
hundred and twenty-one tents round, say, one hundred
and fifty I.B.D.’s, C.B.D.’s, R.E.B.D.’s. . . . Base
depots for infantry, cavalry, sappers, gunners, airmen,
anti-airmen, telephone-men, vets, chiropodists, Royal
Army Service Corps men, Pigeon Service men, Sanitary

60

&C O Of ORE PARADES

Service men, Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps women,
V.A.D. women — what in the world did V.A.D. stand
for? — canteens, rest-tent attendants, barrack damage
superintendents, parsons, priests, rabbis, Mormon
bishops, Brahmins, Lamas, Imams, Fanti men, no
doubt, for African troops. And all really dependent on
the acting orderly-room lance-corporals for their tem¬
poral and spiritual salvation. . . . For, if by a slip of
the pen a lance-corporal sent a Papist priest to an
Ulster regiment, the Ulster men would lynch him, and
all go to hell. Or, if by a slip of the tongue at the
telephone, or a slip of the typewriter, he sent a division
to Westoutre instead of to Dranoutre at one in the
morning, the six or seven thousand poor devils in front
of Dranoutre might all be massacred and nothing but
His Majesty’s Navy could save us. . . .

Yet, in the end, all this tangle was satisfactorily
unravelled; the drafts moved off, unknotting them¬
selves like snakes, coiling out of inextricable bunches,
sliding vertebrately over the mud to dip into their
bowls — the rabbis found Jews dying to whom to ad¬
minister; the vets, spavined mules; the V.A.D. ’s, men
without jaws and shoulders in C.C.S.’s; the camp-
cookers, frozen beef; the chiropodists, ingrowing toe¬
nails; the dentists, decayed molars; the naval howit¬
zers, camouflaged emplacements in picturesquely
wooded dingles. . . . Somehow they got there — even
to the pots of strawberry jam by the ten dozen !

For if the acting lance-corporal, whose life hung
by a hair, made a slip of the pen over a dozen pots
of jam, back he went, Returned to duty . . . back to
the frozen rifle, the ground-sheet on the liquid mud,
the desperate suction on the ankle as the foot was
advanced, the landscapes silhouetted with broken

61

{MORE PARADES

church towers, the continual drone of the planes, the
mazes of duckboards in vast plains of slime, the un¬
ending Cockney humour, the great shells labelled Love
to Little Willie. . . . Back to the Angel with the Flam¬
ing Sword. The wrong side of him! ... So, on the
whole, things moved satisfactorily. . . .

He was walking Colonel Levin imperiously between
the huts towards the mess quarters, their feet crunch¬
ing on the freezing gravel, the colonel hanging back a
little; but a mere light-weight and without nails in his
elegant bootsoles, so he had no grip on the ground. He
was remarkably silent. Whatever he wanted to get out
he was reluctant to come to. He brought out, how¬
ever:

“I wonder you don’t apply to be returned to duty
... to your battalion. I jolly well should if I were
you. . . .”

Tietjens said:

“Why? Because I’ve had a man killed on me?
. . . There must have been a dozen killed to-night.”

“Oh, more, very likely,” the other answered. “It
was one of our own planes that was brought down.
. . . But it isn’t that. . . . Oh, damn it! ... Would
you mind walking the other way? . . . I’ve the great¬
est respect ... oh, almost ... for you personally.
. . . You’re a man of intellect. . . .”

Tietjens was reflecting on a nice point of military
etiquette.

This lisping, ineffectual fellow — he was a very cqye-
ful Staff officer or Campion would not have had him
about the place! — was given to moulding himself ex¬
actly on his general. Physically, in costume as far as
possible, in voice — for his lisp was not his own so
much as an adaptation of the general’s slight stutter

62

&C0 {MORE PARADES

and above all in his uncompleted sentences and point
of view. . . . Now, if he said:

“Look here, colonel . . or “Look here, Colonel
Levin . . or “Look here, Stanley, my boy . . A
For the one thing an officer may not say to a superior
whatever their intimacy was: “Look here, Levin
. . . ” If he said then:

“Look here, Stanley, you’re a silly ass. It’s all very
well for Campion to say that I am unsound because
I’ve some brains. He’s my godfather and has been
saying it to me since I was twelve, and had more brain
in my left heel than he had in the whole of his beau¬
tifully barbered skull. . . . But when you say it you
are just a parrot. You did not think that out for your¬
self. You do not even think it. You know I’m heavy,
short in the wind, and self-assertive . . . but you
know perfectly well that I’m as good on detail as your¬
self. And a damned sight more. You’ve never caught
me tripping over a return. Your sergeant in charge of
returns may have. But not you. . . .”

If Tietjens should say that to this popinjay, would
that be going farther than an officer in charge of de¬
tachment should go with a member of the Staff set
above him, though not on parade and in a conversation
of intimacy? Off parade and in intimate conversation

all His Majesty’s poor - officers are equals . . .

gentlemen having His Majesty’s commission: there
can be no higher rank and all that Bilge! . . . For
how off parade could this descendant of an old-clo’
man from Frankfurt be the equal of him, Tietjens of
Groby? He wasn’t his equal in any way — let alone so¬
cially. If Tietjens hit him he would drop dead; if
he addressed a little sneering remark to Levin, the fel¬
low would melt so that you would see the old splutter-

CO ZMORE PARADES 63

ing Jew swimming up through his carefully arranged
Gentile features. He couldn’t shoot as well as Tietjens,
or ride, or play a hand at auction. Why, damn it,
he, Tietjens, hadn’t the least doubt that he could paint
better water-colour pictures. . . . And, as for returns
... he would undertake to tear the guts out of half
a dozen new and contradictory A.C.I.’s — Army Coun¬
cil Instructions — and write twelve correct Command
Orders founded on them, before Levin had lisped out
the date and serial number of the first one. . . . He
had done it several times up in the room, arranged
like a French blue stocking’s salon, where Levin
worked at Garrison headquarters . . . He had written
Levin’s blessed command orders while Levin fussed
and fumed about their being delayed for tea with Mile
de Bailly . . . and curled his delicate moustache . . .
Mile de Bailly, chaperoned by old Lady Sachse, had
tea by a clear wood fire in an eighteenth-century octag¬
onal room, with blue-grey tapestried walls and pow¬
dering closets, out of priceless porcelain cups without
handles. Pale tea that tasted faintly of cinnamon!

Mile de Bailly was a long, dark, high-coloured Pro-
vengale. Not heavy, but precisely long, slow, and cruel;
coiled in a deep arm-chair, saying the most wounding,
slow things to Levin, she resembled a white Persian cat
luxuriating, sticking out a tentative pawful of expand¬
ing claws. With eyes slanting pronouncedly upwards
and a very thin hooked nose . . . Almost Japanese
. . . And with a terrific cortege of relatives, swell in a
French way. One brother a chauffeur to a Marshal of
France . . . An aristocratic way of shirking!

With all that, obviously even off parade, you might
well be the social equal of a Staff colonel: but you
jolly well had to keep from showing that you were his

64

S\ CO {MORE PARADES

superior. Especially intellectually. If you let yourself
show a Staff officer that he was a silly ass — you could
say it as often as you liked as long as you didn’t prove
it! — you could be certain that you would be for it be¬
fore long. And quite properly. It was not English to
be intellectually adroit. Nay, it was positively un-
English. And the duty of field officers is to keep
messes as English as possible. ... So a Staff officer
would take it out of such a regimental inferior. In a
perfectly creditable way. You would never imagine
the hash headquarters warrant officers would make of
your returns. Until you were worried and badgered
and in the end either you were ejected into, or prayed
to be transferred to . . . any other command in the
whole service. . . .

And that was beastly. The process, not the effect.
On the whole Tietjens did not care where he was or
what he did as long as he kept out of England, the
thought of that country, at night, slumbering across
the Channel, being sentimentally unbearable to him.
. . . Still, he was fond of old Campion, and would
rather be in his command than any other. He had
attached to his staff a very decent set of fellows, as de¬
cent as you could be in contact with ... if you had
to be in contact with your kind. ... So he just said:

“Look here, Stanley, you are a silly ass,” and left
it at that, without demonstrating the truth of the asser¬
tion.

The colonel said:

“Why, what have I been doing now? ... I wish
you would walk the other way. . . .”

Tietjens said:

“No, I can’t afford to go out of camp. . . . I’ve got
to come to witness your fantastic wedding-contract to-

ZACO {MORE PARADES 65

morrow afternoon, haven’t I? ... I can’t leave camp
twice in one week. . . .”

“You’ve got to come down to the camp-guard,”
Levin said. “I hate to keep a woman waiting in the
cold . . . though she is in the general’s car. . .

Tietjens exclaimed:

“You’ve not been . . . oh, extraordinarily enough,
to bring Miss de Bailly out here? To talk to me?”

Colonel Levin mumbled, so low Tietjens almost im¬
agined that he was not meant to hear:

“It isn’t Miss de Bailly!” Then he exclaimed quite
aloud: “Damn it all, Tietjens, haven’t you had hints
enough? . . .”

For a lunatic moment it went through Tietjens’
mind that it must be Miss Wannop in the general’s car,
at the gate, down the hill beside the camp guard-room.
But he knew folly when it presented itself to his mind.
He had nevertheless turned and they were going very
slowly back along the broad way between the huts.
Levin was certainly in no hurry. The broad way would
come to an end of the hutments; about two acres of
slope would descend blackly before them, white stones
to mark a sort of coastguard track glimmering out
of sight beneath a moon gone dark with the frost. And,
down there in the dark forest, at the end of that track,
in a terrific Rolls-Royce, was waiting something of
which Levin was certainly deucedly afraid. . . .

For a minute Tietjens’ backbone stiffened. He
didn’t intend to interfere between Mile de Bailly and
any married woman Levin had had as a mistress. . . .
Somehow he was convinced that what was in that car
was a married woman. . . . He did not dare to think
otherwise. If it was not a married woman it might be
Miss Wannop. If it was, it couldn’t be. . . . An im-

66 WO {MORE PARADES

mense waft of calm, sentimental happiness had de¬
scended upon him. Merely because he had imagined
her! He imagined her little, fair, rather pug-nosed
face: under a fur cap, he did not know why. Leaning
forward she would be, on the seat of the general’s il¬
luminated car: glazed in: a regular raree show! Peer¬
ing out, shortsightedly on account of the reflections on
the inside of the glass. . . .

He was saying to Levin:

“Look here, Stanley . . . why I said you are a silly
ass is because Miss de Bailly has one chief luxury.
It’s exhibiting jealousy. Not feeling it; exhibiting it.”

“ Ought you,” Levin asked ironically, “to discuss my
fiancee before me? As an English gentleman. Tiet-
jens of Groby and all.”

“Why, of course,” Tietjens said. He continued feel¬
ing happy. “As a sort of swollen best man, it’s my
duty to instruct you. Mothers tell their daughters
things before marriage. Best men do it for the inno¬
cent Benedict. . . . And you’re always consulting me
about the young woman. ...”

“I’m not doing it now,” Levin grumbled direly.

“Then what, in God’s name, are you doing? You’ve
got a cast mistress, haven’t you, down there in old
Campion’s car? . . .” They were beside the alley
that led down to his orderly room. Knots of men, dim,
and desultory, still half filled it, a little way down.

“I haven’t Levin exclaimed almost tearfully. “I
never had a mistress. . . .”

“And you’re not married?” Tietjens asked. He used
on purpose the schoolboy’s ejaculation “Lummy!” to
soften the jibe. “If you’ll excuse me,” he said, “I
must just go and take a look at my crowd. To see if
your orders have come down.”

{MORE PARADES 67

He found no orders in a hut as full as ever of the
dull mists and odours of khaki, but he found in
revenge a fine upstanding, blond, Canadian-born lance-
corporal of old Colonial lineage, with a moving story
as .related by Sergeant-Major Cowley:

“This man, sir, of the Canadian Railway lot, ’is
mother’s just turned up in the town, come on from
Eetarpels. Come all the way from Toronto where she
was bedridden.”

Tietjens said:

“Well, what about it? Get a move on.”

The man wanted leave to go to his mother who was
waiting in a decent estaminet at the end of the tram¬
line, just outside the camp where the houses of the
town began.

Tietjens said: “It’s impossible. It’s absolutely im¬
possible. You know that.”

The man stood erect and expressionless; his blue
eyes looked confoundedly honest to Tietjens who was
cursing himself. He said to the man:

“You can see for yourself that it’s impossible, can’t
you?”

The man said slowly:

“Not knowing the regulations in these circumstances
I can’t say, sir. But my mother’s is a very special
case. . . . She’s lost two sons already.”

Tietjens said:

“A great many people have. . . . Do you under¬
stand, if you went absent off my pass I might — I
quite possibly might — lose my commission? I’m
responsible for you fellows getting up the line.”

The man looked down at his feet. Tietjens said
to himself that it was Valentine Wannop doing this to
him. He ought to turn the man down at once. He was

68 £\ CO {MORE PARADES

pervaded by a sense of her being. It was imbecile.
Yet it was so. He said to the man:

“You said good-bye to your mother, didn’t you, in
Toronto, before you left?”

The man said:

“No, sir.” He had not seen his mother in seven
years. He had been up in the Chilkoot when war
broke out and had not heard of it for ten months.
Then he had at once joined up in British Columbia,
and had been sent straight through for railway work,
on to Aldershot where the Canadians have a camp in
building. He had not known that his brothers were
killed till he got there and his mother, being bedridden
at the news, had not been able to get down to Toronto
when his batch had passed through. She lived about
sixty miles from Toronto. Now she had risen from
her bed like a miracle and come all the way. A widow:
sixty-two years of age. Very feeble.

It occurred to Tietjens as it occurred to him ten
times a day that it was idiotic of him to figure Valen¬
tine Wannop to himself. He had not the slightest idea
where she was: in what circumstances, or even in
what house. He did not suppose she and her mother
had stayed on in that dog-kennel of a place in Bed¬
ford Park. They would be fairly comfortable. His
father had left them money. “It is preposterous,”
he said to himself, “to persist in figuring a person to
yourself when you have no idea of where they are.”
He said to the man:

“Wouldn’t it do if you saw your mother at the
camp gate, by the guard-room?”

“Not much of a leave-taking, sir,” the man said;
“she not allowed in the camp and I not allowed out.
Talking under a sentry’s nose very likely.”

69

{MORE PARADES

Tietjens said to himself:

“What a monstrous absurdity this is of seeing and
talking, for a minute or so! You meet and talk . .
And next day at the same hour. Nothing. ... As
well not to meet or talk. ... Yet the mere fantastic
idea of seeing Valentine Wannop for a minute. . . .
She not allowed in the camp and he not going out.
Talking under a sentry’s nose, very likely. ... It had
made him smell primroses. Primroses, like Miss Wan¬
nop. He said to the sergeant-major:

“What sort of a fellow is this?” Cowley, in open-
mouthed suspense, gasped like a fish. Tietjens said:

“I suppose your mother is fairly feeble to stand in
the cold?”

“A very decent man, sir,” the sergeant-major got
out, “one of the best. No trouble. A perfectly clean
conduct sheet. Very good education. A railway en¬
gineer in civil life. . . . Volunteered, of course, sir.”

“That’s the odd thing,” Tietjens said to the man,
“that the percentages of absentees is as great amongst
the volunteers as the Derby men or the compulsorily
enlisted. . . . Do you understand what will happen
to you if you miss the draft?”

The man said soberly:

“Yes, sir. Perfectly well.”

“You understand that you will be shot? As cer¬
tainly as that you stand there. And that you haven’t
a chance of escape.”

He wondered what Valentine Wannop, hot pacifist,
would think of him if she heard him. Yet it was his
duty to talk like that: his human, not merely his mili¬
tary duty. As much his duty as that of a doctor to
warn a man that if he drank of typhoid-contaminated
water he would get typhoid. But people are unreason-

70

D£0 {MORE PARADES

able. Valentine too was unreasonable. She would
consider it brutal to speak to a man of the possibility
of his being shot by a firing party. A groan burst
from him. At the thought that there was no sense
in bothering about what Valentine Wannop would or
would not think of him. No sense. No sense. No
sense. . . .

The man, fortunately, was assuring him that he
knew, very soberly, all about the penalty for going
absent off a draft. The sergeant-major, catching a
sound from Tietjens, said with admirable fussiness to
the man:

“There, there! Don’t you hear the officer’s speak¬
ing? Never interrupt .an officer.”

“You’ll be shot,” Tietjens said, “at dawn. . . .
Literally at dawn.” Why did they shoot them at
dawn? To rub it in that they were never going to
see another sunrise. But they drugged the fellows so
that they wouldn’t know the sun if they saw it: all
roped in a chair. ... It was really the worse for the
firing party. He added to the man:

“Don’t think I’m insulting you. You appear to
be a very decent fellow. But very decent fellows have
gone absent. . . .” He said to the sergeant-major:

“Give this man a two-hours’ pass to go to the . . .
whatever’s the name of the estaminet, . . . The
draft won’t move off for two hours, will it?” He
added to the man: “If you see your draft passing
the pub you run out and fall in. Like mad, you under¬
stand. You’d never get another chance.”

There was a mumble like applause and envy of a
mate’s good luck from a packed audience that had
hung on the lips of simple melodrama ... an audi¬
ence that seemed to be all enlarged eyes, the khaki

3\ CO l MORE PARADES 71

was so colourless. . . . They came as near applause as
they dared, but there was no sense in worrying about
whether Valentine Wannop would have applauded or
not. . . . And there was no knowing whether the fel¬
low w7ould not go absent, either. As likely as not
there was no mother. A girl very likely. And very
likely the man would desert. . . . The man looked you
straight in the eyes. But a strong passion, like that
for escape — or a girl — will give you control over the
muscles of the eyes. A little thing that, before a
strong passion! One would look God in the face on
the day of judgment and lie, in that case.

Because what the devil did he want of Valentine
Wannop? Why could he not stall off the thought of
her? He could stall off the thought of his wife . . .
or his not-wife. But Valentine Wannop came wrig¬
gling in. At all hours of the day and night. It
was an obsession. A madness. . . . What those fools
called “a complex”! . . . Due, no doubt, to something
your nurse had done, or your parents said to you. At
birth ... A strong passion ... or no doubt not
strong enough. Otherwise he, too, would have gone
absent. At any rate, from Sylvia . . . Which he
hadn’t done. Which he hadn’t done. Or hadn’t he?
There was no saying. . . .

It was undoubtedly colder in the alley between the
huts. A man was saying: “Hoo . . . Hooo . . .
Hoo ...” A sound like that, and flapping his arms
and hopping . . . “Hand and foot, mark time! . . .”
Somebody ought to fall these poor devils in and give
them that to keep their circulations going. But they
might not know the command. ... It was a Guards’
trick, really. . . . What the devil were these fellows
kept hanging about here for? he asked.

72 £M0RE PARADES

One or two voices said that they did not know. The
majority said gutturally:

“Waiting for our mates, sir. ...”

“I should have thought you could have waited under
cover,” Tietjens said caustically. “But never mind;
it’s your funeral, if you like it. . . .” This getting
together ... a strong passion. There was a warmed
recreation-hut for waiting drafts not fifty yards away.
. . . But they stood, teeth chattering and mumbling
“Hoo . . . Hooo . . .” rather than miss thirty sec¬
onds of gabble. . . . About what the English sergeant-
major said and about what the officer said and how
many dollars did they give you. . . . And of course
about what you answered back. ... Or perhaps not
that. These Canadian troops were husky, serious fel¬
lows, without the swank of the Cockney or the Lin¬
colnshire Moonrakers. They wanted, apparently, to
learn the rules of war. They discussed anxiously infor¬
mation that they received in orderly rooms, and looked
at you as if you were expounding the gospels. . . .

But, damn it, he, he himself, would make a pact
with Destiny, at that moment, willingly, to pass thirty
months in the frozen circle of hell, for the chance
of thirty seconds in which to tell Valentine Wannop
what he had answered back ... to Destiny! . . .
What was the fellow in the Inferno who was buried
to the neck in ice and begged Dante to clear the icicles
out of his eyelids so that he could see out of them?
And Dante kicked him in the face because he was a
Ghibelline. . . . Always a bit of a swine, Dante. . . .
Rather like . . . like whom? . . . Oh, Sylvia Tiet¬
jens. ... A good hater! . . . He imagined hatred
coming to him in waves from the convent in which
Sylvia had immured herself. . . . Gone into retreat.

73

3^0 {MORE PARADES

. . . He imagined she had gone into retreat. She had
said she was going. For the rest of the war. . . . For
the duration of hostilities or life, whichever were the
longer. . . . He imagined Sylvia, coiled up on a con¬
vent bed. . . . Hating. . . . Her certainly glorious
hair all round her. . . . Hating. . . . Slowly and
coldly. . . . Like the head of a snake when you exam¬
ined it. . . . Eyes motionless: mouth closed tight.
. . . Looking away into the distance and hating. . . .
She was presumably in Birkenhead. ... A long way
to send your hatred. . . . Across a country and a sea
in an icy night. . . ! Over all that black land and
water . . . with the lights out because of air-raids
and U-boats. . . . Well, he did not have to think of
Sylvia at the moment. She was well out of it. . . .

It was certainly getting no warmer as the night
drew on. . . . Even that ass Levin was pacing swiftly
up and down in the dusky moon-shadow of the last
hutments that looked over the slope and the vanishing
trail of white stones. ... In spite of his boasting
about not wearing an overcoat: to catch women’s eyes
with his pretty Staff gadgets he was carrying on like
a leopard at feeding time. . . .

Tietjens said:

“Sorry to’keep you waiting, old man. ... Or rather
your lady. . . . But there were some men to see to.
. . . And, you know . . . ‘The comfort and — what is
it? — of the men comes before every — is it “considera¬
tion”? — except the exigencies of actual warfare’ . . .
My memory’s gone phut these days. . . . And you
want me to slide down this hill and wheeze back again.
. . . To see a woman! . . .”

Levin screeched: “Damn you, you ass! It’s your
wife who’s waiting for you at the bottom there.”

CHAPTER III

The one thing that stood out sharply in Tietjens’
mind when at last, with a stiff glass of rum punch,
his officer’s pocket-book complete with pencil because
he had to draft before eleven a report as to the desir¬
ability for giving his unit special lectures on the causes
of the war, and a cheap French novel on a camp chair
beside him he sat in his flea-bag with six army blankets
over him — the one thing that stood out as sharply as
Staff tabs was that that ass Levin was rather pathetic.
His unnailed bootsoles very much cramping his action
on the frozen hillside, he had alternately hobbled a
step or two, and, reduced to inaction, had grabbed at
Tietjens’ elbow, while he brought out breathlessly puz¬
zled sentences. . . .

There resulted a singular mosaic of extraordinary,
bright-coloured and melodramatic statements, for
Levin, who first hobbled down the hill with Tietjens
and then hobbled back up, clinging to his arm, brought
out monstrosities of news about Sylvia’s activities,
without any sequence, and indeed without any appar¬
ent aim except for the great affection he had for Tiet¬
jens himself. . . . All sorts of singular things seemed
to have been going on round him in the vague zone,
outside all this engrossed and dust-coloured world — in
the vague zone that held. . . . Oh, the civilian popu¬
lation, tea-parties short of butter! . . .

And as Tietjens, seated on his hams, his knees up,
pulled the soft woolliness of his flea-bag under his
chin and damned the paraffin heater for letting out

74

5^0 {MORE PARADES 75

a new and singular stink, it seemed to him that this,
affair was like coming back after two months and
trying to get the hang of battalion orders. . . . You
come back to the familiar, slightly battered mess ante¬
room. You tell the mess orderly to bring you the last
two months’ orders, for it is as much as your life
is worth not to know what is or is not in them. . . .
There might be an A.C.I. ordering you to wear your
helmet back to the front, or a battalion order that
Mills bombs must always be worn in the left breast
pocket. Or there might be the detail for putting on a
new gas helmet! . . . The orderly hands you a di¬
shevelled mass of faintly typewritten matter, thumbed
out of all chance of legibility, with the orders for
November 16 fastened inextricably into the middle of
those for the ist of December, and those for the ioth,
15th and 29th missing altogether. . . . And all that
you gather is that headquarters has some exceedingly
insulting things to say about A Company; that a fellow
called Hartopp, whom you don’t know, has been de¬
prived of his commission; that at a court of inquiry
held to ascertain deficiencies in C Company Captain
Wells — poor Wells! — has been assessed at £27 iix.
4 d., which he is requested to pay forthwith to the
adjutant. . . .

So, on that black hillside, going and returning, what
stuck out for Tietjens was that Levin had been taught
by the general to consider that he, Tietjens, was an
extraordinarily violent chap who would certainly
knock Levin down when he told him that his wife was
at the camp gates; that Levin considered himself to be
the descendant of an ancient Quaker family. . . .
(Tietjens had said Good God! at that) ; that the
mysterious “rows” to which in his fear Levin had

76 {MORE PARADES

been continually referring had been successive letters
from Sylvia to the harried general . . . and that
Sylvia had accused him, Tietjens, of stealing two pairs
of her best sheets. . . . There was a great deal more.
But, having faced what he considered to be the worst
of the situation, Tietjens set himself coolly to reca¬
pitulate every aspect of his separation from his wife.
He had meant to face every aspect, not that merely
social one upon which, hitherto, he had automatically
imagined their disunion to rest. For, as he saw it,
English people of good position * consider that the
basis of all marital unions or disunions, is the maxim:
No scenes. Obviously for the sake of the servants —
who are the same thing as the public. No scenes, then,
for the sake of the public. And indeed, with him, the
instinct for privacy — as to his relationships, his pas¬
sions, or even as to his most unimportant motives — was
as strong as the instinct of life itself. He would, liter¬
ally, rather be dead than an open book.

And, until that afternoon, he had imagined that
his wife, too, would rather be dead than have her
affairs canvassed by the other ranks. . . . But that
assumption had to be gone over. Revised. ... Of
course he might say she had gone mad. But, if he
said she had gone mad he would have to revise a great
deal of their relationships, so it would be as broad as it
was long. . . .

The doctor’s batman, from the other end of the
hut, said:

“Poor - O Nine Morgan! . . in a sing-song,

mocking voice. . . .

For though, hours before, Tietjens had appointed
this moment of physical ease that usually followed on
his splurging heavily down on to his creaking camp-

S\CO {MORE PARADES 77

bed in the doctor’s lent hut, for the cool consideration
of his relations with his wife, it was not turning out a
very easy matter. The hut was unreasonably warm:
he had invited Mackenzie — whose real name turned out
to be McKechnie, James Grant McKechnie — to oc¬
cupy the other end of it. The other end of it was
divided from him by a partition of canvas and a
striped Indian curtain. And McKechnie, who was
unable to sleep, had elected to carry on a long — an
interminable — conversation with the doctor’s batman.

The doctor’s batman also could not sleep and, like
McKechnie, was more than a little barmy on the
crumpet — an almost non-English-speaking Welshman
from God knows what up-country valley. He had
shaggy hair like a Caribbean savage and two dark,
resentful wall-eyes; being a miner he sat on his heels
more comfortably than on a chair and his almost in¬
comprehensible voice went on in a low sort of ululation,
with an occasionally and startlingly comprehensible
phrase sticking out now and then.

It was troublesome, but orthodox enough. The
batman had been blown literally out of most of his
senses and the Vlth Battalion of the Glamorganshire
Regiment by some German high explosive or other,
more than a year ago. But before then, it appeared, he
had been in McKechnie’s own company ir. that bat¬
talion. It was perfectly in order that an officer should
gossip with a private formerly of his own platoon or
company, especially on first meeting him after long
separation caused by a casualty to one or the other.
And McKechnie had first re-met this scoundrel Jonce,
or Evanns, at eleven that night — two and a half hours
before. So there, in the light of a single candle stuck
in a stout bottle they were tranquilly at it: the batman

78

5^0 MORE PARADES

sitting on his heel by the officer’s head; the officer, in
his pyjamas, sprawling half out of bed over his pillows,
stretching his arms abroad, occasionally yawning, occa¬
sionally asking: “What became of Company-Sergeant-
Major Hoyt?” . . . They might talk till half-past
three.

But that was troublesome to a gentleman seeking
to recapture what exactly were his relations with his
wife.

Before the doctor’s batman had interrupted him by
speaking startlingly of O Nine Morgan, Tietjens had
got as far as what follows with his recapitulation:
The lady, Mrs. Tietjens, was certainly without miti¬
gation a whore; he himself equally certainly and with¬
out qualification had been physically faithful to the
lady and their marriagfe tie. In law, then, he was
absolutely in the right of it. But that fact had less
weight than a cobweb. For after the last of her high¬
handed divagations from fidelity he had accorded to the
lady the shelter of his roof and of his name. She had
lived for years beside him, apparently on terms of
hatred and miscomprehension. But certainly in con¬
ditions of chastity. Then, during the tenuous and
lugubrious small hours, before his coming out there
again to France, she had given evidence of a madly
vindictive passion for his person. A physical passion
at any rate.

Well, those were times of mad, fugitive emotions.
But even in the calmest times a man could not expect
to have a woman live with him as the mistress of his
house and mother of his heir without establishing some
sort of claim upon him. They hadn’t slept together.
But was it not possible that a constant measuring to¬
gether of your minds was as proper to give you a

cA CO zMORE PARADES 79

proprietary right as the measuring together of the
limbs? It was perfectly possible. Well then . . .

What, in the eyes of God, severed a union? . . .
Certainly he had imagined — until that very afternoon
— that their union had been cut, as the tendon of
Achilles is cut in a hamstringing, by Sylvia’s clear
voice, outside his house, saying in the dawn to a cab¬
man, “Paddington!” . . . He tried to go with extreme
care through every detail of their last interview in his
still nearly dark drawing-room at the other end of
which she had seemed a mere white phosphorescence.
• • •

They had, then, parted for good on that day. He
was going out to France; she into retreat in a con¬
vent near Birkenhead — to which place you go from
Paddington. Well then, that was one parting. That,
surely, set him free for the girl!

He took a sip from the glass of rum and water on
the canvas chair beside him. It was tepid and there¬
fore beastly. He had ordered the batman to bring
it him hot, strong and sweet, because he had been
certain of an incipient cold. He had refrained from
drinking it because he had remembered that he was
to think cold-bloodedly of Sylvia, and he made a
practice of never touching alcohol when about to en¬
gage in protracted reflection. That had always been
his theory: it had been immensely and empirically
strengthened by his warlike experience. On the
Somme, in the summer, when stand-to had been at
four in the morning, you would come out of your
dug-out and survey, with a complete outfit of pessimis¬
tic thoughts, a dim, grey, repulsive landscape over a
dull and much too thin parapet. There would be re¬
pellent posts, altogether too fragile entanglements of

80

{^O {MORE PARADES

barbed wire, broken wheels, detritus, coils of mist over
the positions of revolting Germans. Grey stillness;
grey horrors, in front; and behind amongst the civilian
populations! And clear, hard outlines to every
thought. . . . Then your batman brought you a cup
of tea with a little — quite a little — rum in it. In three
or four minutes the whole world changed beneath your
eyes. The wire aprons became jolly efficient protec¬
tions that your skill had devised and for which you
might thank God; the broken wheels were convenient
landmarks for raiding at night in No Man’s Land.
You had to confess that, when you had re-erected
that parapet, after it had last been jammed in, your
company had made a pretty good job of it. And,
even as far as the Germans were concerned, you were
there to kill the swine; but you didn’t feel that the
thought of them would make you sick beforehand.
. . . You were, in fact, a changed man. With a mind
of a different specific gravity. You could not even
tell that the roseate touches of dawn on the mists were
not really the effects of rum. . . .

Therefore he had determined not to touch his grog.
But his throat had gone completely dry; so, mechan¬
ically, he had reached out for something to drink,
checking himself when he had realized what he was
doing. But why should his throat be dry? He hadn’t
been on the drink. He had not even had any dinner.
And why was he in this extraordinary state? ... For
he was in an extraordinary state. It was because the
idea had suddenly occurred to him that his parting
from his wife had set him free for his girl. . . . The
idea had till then never entered his head.

He said to himself: We must go methodically into

C^O {MORE PARADES 81

this! Methodically into the history of his last day
on earth. . . .

Because he swore that when he had come out to
France this time he had imagined that he was cutting
loose from this earth. And during the months that
he had been there he had seemed to have no connec¬
tion with any earthly things. He had imagined Sylvia
in her convent and done with; Miss Wannop he had
not been able to imagine at all. But she had seemed to
be done with.

It was difficult to get his mind back to that night.
You cannot force your mind to a deliberate, consecu¬
tive recollection unless you are in the mood; then
it will do whether you want it to or not. . . . He
had had then, three months or so ago, a very painful
morning with his wife, the pain coming from a sud¬
denly growing conviction that his wife was forcing
herself into an attitude of caring for him. Only an
attitude probably, because, in the end, Sylvia was a
lady and would not allow herself really to care for the
person in the world for whom it would be least decent
of her to care. . . . But she would be perfectly capa¬
ble of forcing herself to take that attitude if she
thought that it would enormously inconvenience him¬
self. . . .

But that wasn’t the way, wasn’t the way, wasn’t
the way his excited mind said to himself. He was
excited because it was possible that Miss Wannop,
too, might not have meant their parting to be a per¬
manency. That opened up an immense perspective.
Nevertheless, the contemplation of that immense per¬
spective was not the way to set about a calm analysis
of his relations with his wife. The facts of the story
must be stated before the moral. He said to himself

82 MORE PARADES

that he must put, in exact language, as if he were
making a report for the use of garrison headquarters,
the history of himself in his relationship to his wife.

. . . And to Miss Wannop, of course. “Better put it
into writing,” he said.

Well then. He clutched at his pocket-book and
wrote in large pencilled characters:

“When I married Miss Satterthwaite,” — he was at¬
tempting exactly to imitate a report to General Head¬
quarters — -“unknown to myself, she imagined herself
to be with child by a fellow called Drake. I think she
was not. The matter is debatable. I am passionately
attached to the child who is my heir and the heir of a
family of considerable position. The lady was sub¬
sequently, on several occasions, though I do not know
how many, unfaithful to me. She left me with a fellow
called Perowne, whom she had met constantly at the
house of my godfather, General Lord Edward Cam¬
pion, on whose staff Perowne was. That was long be-1
fore the war. This intimacy was, of course, certainly
unsuspected by the general. Perowne is again on the
staff of General Campion, who has the quality of at¬
tachment to his old subordinates, but as Perowne is
an inefficient officer, he is used only for more decora¬
tive jobs. Otherwise, obviously, as he is an old reg¬
ular, his seniority should make him a general, and he
is only a major. I make this diversion about Perowne
because his presence in this garrison causes me natural
personal annoyance.

“My wife, after an absence of several months with
Perowne, wrote and told me that she wished to be taken
back into my household. I allowed this. My prin¬
ciples prevent me from divorcing any woman, in par¬
ticular any woman who is the mother of a child. As

&C0 {MORE PARADES 83

I had taken no steps to ensure publicity for the
escapade of Mrs. Tietjens, no one, as far as I know,
was aware of her absence. Mrs. Tietjens, being a
Roman Catholic, is prevented from divorcing me.

“During this absence of Mrs. Tietjens with the man
Perowne, I made the acquaintance of a young woman,
Miss Wannop, the daughter of my father’s oldest
friend, who was also an old friend of General Cam¬
pion’s. Our station in Society naturally forms rather
a close ring. I was immediately aware that I had
formed a sympathetic but not violent attachment for
Miss Wannop, and fairly confident that my feeling
was returned. Neither Miss Wannop nor myself be¬
ing persons to talk about the state of our feelings,
we exchanged no confidences. ... A disadvantage of
being English of a certain station.

“The position continued thus for several year's.
Six or seven. After her return from her excursion
with Perowne, Mrs. Tietjens remained, I believe, per¬
fectly chaste. I saw Miss Wannop sometimes fre¬
quently, for a period, in her mother’s house or on
social occasions, sometimes not for long intervals).
No expression of affection on the part of either of us
ever passed. Not one. Ever.

“On the day before my second going out to France
I had a very painful scene with my wife, during
which, for the first time, we went into the question of
the parentage of my child and other matters. In the
afternoon I met Miss Wannop by appointment outside
the War Office. The appointment had been made by
my wife, not by me. I knew nothing about it. My
wife must have been more aware of my feelings for
Miss Wannop than was I myself.

“In St. James’s Park I invited Miss Wannop to

84 {MORE PARADES

become my mistress that evening. She consented and
made an assignation. It is to be presumed that that
was evidence of her affection for me. We have never
exchanged words of affection. Presumably a young
lady does not consent to go to bed with a married
man without feeling affection for him. But I have no
proof. It was, of course, only a few hours before my
going out to France. Those are emotional sorts of
moments for young women. No doubt they consent
more easily.

“But we didn’t. We were together at one-thirty
in the morning, leaning over her suburban garden gate.
And nothing happened. We agreed that we were the
sort of persons who didn’t. I do not know how we
agreed. We never finished a sentence. Yet it was a
passionate scene. So I touched the brim of my cap
and said: So long! ... Or perhaps I did not even say
So long. ... Or she. ... I don’t remember. I re¬
member the thoughts I thought and the thoughts I
gave her credit for thinking. But perhaps she did
not think them. There is no knowing. It is no good
going into them . . . except that I gave her credit for
thinking that we were parting for good. Perhaps she
did not mean that. Perhaps I could write letters to
her. And live . . .”

He exclaimed:

“God, what a sweat I am in! . . .”

The sweat, indeed, was pouring down his temples.
He became instinct with a sort of passion to let his
thoughts wander into epithets and go about where they
would. But he stuck at it. He was determined to
get it expressed. He wrote on again:

“I got home towards two in the morning and went
into the dining-room in the dark. I did not need a

ZMORE PARADES 85

light. I sat thinking for a long time. Then Sylvia
spoke from the other end of the room. There was thus
an abominable situation. I have never been spoken to
with such hatred. She went, perhaps, mad. She had
apparently been banking on the idea that if I had
physical contact with Miss Wannop I might satisfy
my affection for the girl. . . . And feel physical de¬
sires for her. . . . But she knew, without my speak¬
ing, that I had not had physical contact with the girl.
She threatened to ruin me; to ruin me in the Army;
to drag my name through the mud. ... I never spoke.
I am damn good at not speaking. She struck me in
the face. And went away. Afterwards she threw into
the room, through the half-open doorway, a gold medal¬
lion of St. Michael, the R.C. patron of soldiers in
action that she had worn between her breasts. I took it
to mean the final act of parting. As if by no longer
wearing it she abandoned all prayer for my safety.
... It might just as well mean that she wished me to
wear it myself for my personal protection. ... I
heard her go down the stairs with her maid. The
dawn was just showing through the chimney-pots op¬
posite. I heard her say: Paddington. Clear, high
syllables! And a motor drove off.

“I got my things together and went to Waterloo.
Mrs. Satterthwaite, her mother, was waiting to see
me off. She was very distressed that her daughter
had not come, too. She was of opinion that it meant
we had parted for good. I was astonished to find
that Sylvia had told her mother about Miss Wannop
because Sylvia had always been extremely reticent,
even to her mother. . . . Mrs. Satterthwaite, who was
•very distressed — she likes me! — expressed the most
gloomy forebodings as to what Sylvia might not be up

86 WO [MORE PARADES

to. I laughed at her. She began to tell me a long
anecdote about what a Father Consett, Sylvia’s con¬
fessor, had said about Sylvia years before. He had
said that if I ever came to care for another woman
Sylvia would tear the world to pieces to get at me. . . .
Meaning, to disturb my equanimity! ... It was diffi¬
cult to follow Mrs. Satterthwaite. The side of an of¬
ficer’s train, going off, is not a good place for con¬
fidences. So the interview ended rather untidily.”

At this point Tietjens groaned so audibly that Mc-
Kechnie, from the other end of the hut, asked if he
had not said anything. Tietjens saved himself with:

“That candle looks from here to be too near the
side of the hut. Perhaps it isn’t. These buildings are
very inflammable.”

It was no good going on writing. He was no writer,
and this writing gave no sort of psychological pointers.
He wasn’t himself ever much the man for psychology,
but one ought to be as efficient at it as at anything
else. . . . Well then . . . What was at the bottom
of all the madness and cruelty that had distinguished
both himself and Sylvia on his last day and night in
his native country? . . . For, mark! It was Sylvia
who had made, unknown to him, the appointment
through which the girl had met him. Sylvia had
wanted to force him and Miss Wannop into each other’s
arms. Quite definitely. She had said as much. But
she had only said that afterwards. When the game
had not come off. She had had too much knowledge of
amatory manoeuvres to show her hand before. . . .

Why then had she done it? Partly, undoubtedly,
out of pity for him. She had given him a rotten
time; she had undoubtedly, at one moment, wanted
to give him the consolation of his girl’s arms. . . .

D£0 {MORE PARADES 87

Why, damn it, she, Sylvia, and no one else, had
forced out of him the invitation to the girl to become
his mistress. Nothing but the infernal cruelty of
their interview of the morning could have forced him
to the pitch of sexual excitement that would make him
make a proposal of illicit intercourse to a young lady
to whom hitherto he had spoken not even one word
of affection. It was an effect of a Sadie kind. That
was the only way to look at it scientifically. And with¬
out doubt Sylvia had known what she was doing.
The whole morning, at intervals, like a person directing
the whiplash to a cruel spot of pain, reiteratedly,
she had gone on and on. She had accused him of
having Valentine Wannop for his mistress. She had
accused him of having Valentine Wannop for his mis¬
tress. She had accused him of having Valentine Wan¬
nop for his mistress. . . . With maddening reitera¬
tion, like that. They had disposed of an estate; they
had settled up a number of business matters ; they had
decided that his heir was to be brought up as a Papist
— the mother’s religion! They had gone, agonizedly
enough, into their own relationships and past history.
Into the very paternity of his child. . . . But always,
at moments when his mind was like a blind octopus,
squirming in an agony of knife-cuts she would drop
in that accusation. She had accused him of having
Valentine Wannop for his mistress. . . .

He swore by the living God. . . . He had never
realized that he had a passion for the girl till that morn¬
ing; that he had a passion deep and boundless like
the sea, shaking like a tremor of the whole world, an
unquenchable thirst, a thing the thought of which
made your bowels turn over. . . . But he had not been
the sort of fellow who goes into his emotions. . . .

88

D£0 MORE PARADES

Why, damn it, even at that moment when he thought
of the girl, there, in that beastly camp, in that Rem¬
brandt beshadowed hut, when he thought of the girl
he named her to himself Miss Wannop. . . .

It wasn’t in that way that a man thought of a
young woman whom he was aware of passionately
loving. He wasn’t aware. He hadn’t been aware.
Until that morning. . . .

Then . . . that let him out. . . . Undoubtedly that
let him out. ... A woman cannot throw her man, her
official husband, into the arms of the first girl that
comes along and consider herself as having any further
claims upon him. Especially if, on the same day, you
part with him, he going out to France! Did it let him
out? Obviously it did.

He caught with such rapidity at his glass of rum
and water that a little of it ran over on to his thumb.
He swallowed the lot, being instantly warmed. . . .

What in the world was he doing? Now? With
all this introspection? . . . Hang it all, he was not
justifying himself. ... He had acted perfectly cor¬
rectly as far as Sylvia was concerned. Not perhaps to
Miss Wannop. . . . Why, if he, Christopher Tietjens
of Groby, had the need to justify himself, what did it
stand for to be Christopher Tietjens of Groby? That
was the unthinkable thought.

Obviously he was not immune from the seven deadly
sins. In the way of a man. One might lie, yet not
bear false witness against a neighbour; one might kill,
yet not without fitting provocation or for self-interest;
one might conceive of theft as reiving cattle from the
false Scots which was the Yorkshireman’s duty; one
might fornicate, obviously, as long as you did not fuss
about it unhealthily. That was the right of the Sei-

^CO {MORE PARADES 89

gneur in a world of Other Ranks. He hadn’t personally
committed any of these sins to any great extent. One
reserved the right so to do and to take the con¬
sequences. . . .

But what in the world had gone wrong with Sylvia?
She was giving away her own game, and that he had
never known her do. But she could not have made
more certain, if she had wanted to, of returning him to
his allegiance to Miss Wannop than by forcing herself
there into his private life, and doing it with such
blatant vulgarity. For what she had done had been to
make scenes before the servants! All the while he had
been in France she had been working up to it. Now
she had done it. Before the Tommies of his own unit.
But Sylvia did not make mistakes like that. It was a
game. What game? He didn’t even attempt to con¬
jecture! She could not expect that he would in the
future even extend to her the shelter of his roof. . . .
What then was the game? He could not believe that
she could be capable of vulgarity except with a pur¬
pose. . . .

She was a thoroughbred. He had always credited
her with being that. And now she was behaving as if
she had every mean vice that a mare could have.
Or it looked like it. Was that, then, because she had
been in his stable? But how in the world otherwise
could he have run their lives? She had been unfaith¬
ful to him. She had never been anything but unfaithful
to him, before or after marriage. In a high-handed way
so that he could not condemn her, though it was dis¬
agreeable enough to himself. He took her back into his
house after she had been off with the fellow Perowne.
What more could she ask? . . . He could find no an¬
swer. And it was not his business!

90

{^O {MORE PARADES

But even if he did not bother about the motives
of the poor beast of a woman, she was the mother
of his heir. And now she was running about the world
declaiming about her wrongs. What sort of a thing
was that for a boy to have happen to him? A mother
who made scenes before the servants! That was
enough to ruin any boy’s life. . . .

There was no getting away from it that that was
what Sylvia had been doing. She had deluged the
general with letters for the last two months or so,
at first merely contenting herself with asking where
he, Tietjens, was and in what state of health, con¬
ditions of danger, and the like. Very decently, for
some time, the old fellow had said nothing about
the matter to him. He had probably taken the letters
to be the naturally anxious inquiries of a wife with a
husband at the front; he had considered that Tietjens’
letters to her must have been insufficiently communica¬
tive, or concealed what she imagined to be wounds or
a position of desperate danger. That would not have
been very pleasant in any case; women should not
worry superior officers about the vicissitudes of their
menfolk. It was not done. Still, Sylvia was very
intimate with Campion and his family — more intimate
than he himself was, though Campion was his god¬
father. But quite obviously her letters had got worse
and worse.

It was difficult for Tietjens to make out exactly
what she had said. His channel of information had
been Levin, who was too gentlemanly ever to say
anything direct at all. Too gentlemanly, too implicitly
trustful of Tietjens’ honour . . . and too bewildered
by the charms of Sylvia, who had obviously laid herself
out to bewilder the poor Staff-wallah. . . . But she

91

<^0 {MORE PARADES

had gone pretty far, either in her letters or in her con¬
versation since she had been in that city, to which — •
it was characteristic — she had come without any sort of
passports or papers, just walking past gentlemen in
their wooden boxes at pierheads and the like, in con¬
versation with — of all people in the world! — with Per-
owne, who had been returning from leave with King’s
dispatches, or something glorified of the Staff sort!
In a special train very likely. That was Sylvia all
over.

Levin said that Campion had given Perowne the
most frightful dressing down he had ever heard mortal
man receive. And it really was damn hard on the poor
general, who, after happenings to one of his predeces¬
sors, had been perfectly rabid to keep skirts out of
his headquarters. Indeed it was one of the crosses of
Levin’s worried life that the general had absolutely
refused him, Levin, leave to marry Miss de Bailly if
he would not undertake that that young woman should
leave France by the first boat after the ceremony.
Levin, of course, was to go with her, but the young
woman was not to return to France for the duration of
hostilities. And a fine row all her noble relatives had
raised over that. It had cost Levin another hundred
and fifty thousand francs in the marriage settlements.
The married wives of officers in any case were not
allowed in France, though you could not keep out their
unmarried ones. . . .

Campion, anyhow, had dispatched his furious note
to Tietjens after receiving, firstly, in the early morn¬
ing, a letter from Sylvia in which she said that her
ducal second-cousin, the lugubrious Rugeley, highly
disapproved of the fact that Tietjens was in France
at all, and after later receiving, towards four in the

92 (A CO (MORE PARADES

afternoon, a telegram, dispatched by Sylvia herself
from Havre, to say that she would be arriving by a
noon train. The general had been almost as much
upset at the thought that his car would not be there
to meet Sylvia as by the thought that she was coming
at all. But a strike of French railway civilians had
delayed Sylvia’s arrival. Campion had dispatched,
within five minutes, his snorter to Tietjens, who he was
convinced knew all about Sylvia’s coming, and his
car to Rouen Station with Levin in it.

The general, in fact, was in a fine confusion. He
was convinced that Tietjens, as Man of Intellect, had
treated Sylvia badly, even to the extent of stealing
two pair of her best sheets, and he was also con¬
vinced that Tietjens was in close collusion with
Sylvia. As Man of Intellect, Campion was convinced,
Tietjens was dissatisfied with his lowly job of draft¬
forwarding officer, and wanted a place of an extrav¬
agantly cooshy kind in the general’s own entourage.
. . . And Levin had said that it made it all the worse
that Campion in his bothered heart thought that Tiet¬
jens really ought to have more exalted employment.
He had said to Levin:

“Damn it all, the fellow ought to be in command
of my Intelligence instead of you. But he’s unsound.
That’s what he is: unsound. He’s too brilliant. . . .
And he’d talk both the hind legs off Sweedlepumpkins.”
Sweedlepumpkins was the general’s favourite charger.
The general was afraid of talk. He practically never
talked with anyone except about his job — certainly
never with Tietjens — without being proved to be in the
wrong, and that undermined his belief in himself.

So that altogether he was in a fine fume. And
confusion. He was almost ready to believe that Tiet-

MORE PARADES 93

jens was at the bottom of every trouble that occurred
in his immense command.

But, when all that was gathered, Tietjens was not
much farther forward in knowing what his wife’s
errand in France was.

“She complains,” Levin had bleated painfully at
some point on the slippery coastguard path, “about
your taking her sheets. And about a Miss ... a Miss
Wanostrocht, is it? . . . The general is not inclined to
attach much importance to the sheets. . . .”

It appeared that a sort of conference on Tietjens’
case had taken place in the immense tapestried salon
in which Campion lived with the more intimate mem¬
bers of his headquarters, and which was, for the mo¬
ment, presided over by Sylvia, who had exposed various
wrongs to the general and Levin. Major Perowne had
excused himself on the ground that he was hardly com¬
petent to express an opinion. Really, Levin said, he
was sulking, because Campion had accused him of
running the risk of getting himself and Mrs. Tietjens
“talked about.” Levin thought it was a bit thick of the
general. Were none of the members of his staff ever to
escort a lady anywhere? As if they were sixth-form
schoolboys. . . .

“But you . . . you . . . you . . .” he stuttered and
shivered together, “certainly do seem to have been re¬
miss in not writing to Mrs. Tietjens. The poor lady —
excuse me! — really appears to have been out of her
mind with anxiety. . . .” That was why she had been
waiting in the general’s car at the bottom of the hill.
To get a glimpse of Tietjens’ living body. For they
had been utterly unable, up at H.Q., to convince her
that Tietjens was even alive, much less in that town.

She hadn’t in fact waited even so long. Having

94 £M0RE PARADES

apparently convinced herself by conversation with the
sentries outside the guard-room that Tietjens actually
still existed, she had told the chauffeur-orderly to drive
her back to the Hotel de la Poste, leaving the wretched
Levin to make his way back into the town by tram,
or as best he might. They had seen the lights of the
car below them, turning, with its gaily lit interior, and
disappearing among the trees along the road farther
down. . . . The sentry, rather monosyllabically and
gruffly — you can tell all right when a Tommie has
something at the back of his mind! — informed them
that the sergeant had turned out the guard so that all
his men together could assure the lady that the cap¬
tain was alive and well. The obliging sergeant said
that he had adopted that manoeuvre which generally
should attend only the visits of general officers and,
once a day, for the C.O., because the lady had seemed
so distressed at having received no letters from the
captain. The guard-room itself, which was unprovided
with cells, was decorated by the presence of two drunks
who, having taken it into their heads to destroy their
clothing, were in a state of complete nudity. The ser¬
geant hoped, therefore, that he had done no wrong.
Rightly the Garrison Military Police ought to take
drunks picked up outside camp to the A.P.M.’s guard-
room, but seeing the state of undress and the violent
behaviour of these two, the sergeant had thought right
to oblige the Red Caps. The voices of the drunks,
singing the martial anthem of the “Men of Harlech”
could be heard corroborating the sergeant’s opinion as
to their states. He added that he would not have
turned out the guard if it had not been for its being
the captain’s lady.

“A damn smart fellow, that sergeant,” Colonel Levin

SV’O MORE PARADES 95

had said. “There couldn’t have been any better way of
convincing Mrs. Tietjens.”

Tietjens had said — and even whilst he was saying
it he tremendously wished he hadn’t:

“Oh, a damned smart fellow,” for the bitter irony
of his tone had given Levin the chance to remonstrate
with him as to his attitude towards Sylvia. Not at all
as to his actions — for Levin conscientiously stuck to his
thesis that Tietjens was the soul of honour — but just as
to his tone of voice in talking of the sergeant who had
been kind to Sylvia, and, just precisely, because Tiet-
jens’ not writing to his wife had given rise to the
incident. Tietjens had thought of saying that, con¬
sidering the terms on which they had parted, he would
have considered himself as molesting the lady if he had
addressed to her any letter at all. But he said noth¬
ing and, for quarter of an hour, the incident resolved
itself into a soliloquy on the slippery hillside, delivered
by Levin on the subject of matrimony. It was a mat¬
ter which, naturally, at that moment very much occu¬
pied his thoughts. He considered that a man should
so live with his wife that she should be able to open
all his letters. That was his idea of the idyllic. And
when Tietjens remarked with irony that he had never
in his life either written or received a letter that his
wife might not have read, Levin exclaimed with such
enthusiasm as almost to lose his balance in the mist:

“I was sure of it, old fellow. But it enormously
cheers me up to hear you say so.” He added that
he desired as far as possible to model his ideas of
life and his behaviour on those of this his friend.
For, naturally, about as he was to unite his fortunes
with those of Miss de Bailly, that could be considered a
turning point of his career.

CHAPTER IV

They had gone back up the hill so that Levin might
telephone to headquarters for his own car in case the
general’s chauffeur should not have the sense to return
for him. But that was as far as Tietjens got in unin¬
terrupted reminiscence of that scene. . . . He was sit¬
ting in his flea-bag, digging idly with his pencil into the
squared page of his note-book which had remained open
on his knees, his eyes going over and over again over
the words with which his report on his own case had
concluded — the words: So the interview ended rather
untidily. Over the words went the image of the dark
hillside with the lights of the town, now that the air¬
raid was finished, spreading high up into the sky
below them. . . .

But at that point the doctor’s batman had uttered,
as if with a jocular, hoarse irony, the name:

“Poor - O Nine Morgan! . . and over the

whitish sheet of paper on a level with his nose Tietjens
perceived thin films of reddish purple to be wavering,
then a glutinous surface of gummy scarlet pigment.
Moving! It was once more an effect of fatigue, operat¬
ing on the retina, that was perfectly familiar to Tiet¬
jens. But it filled him with indignation against his own
weakness. He said to himself: Wasn’t the name of
the wretched 0 Nine Morgan to be mentioned in his
hearing without his retina presenting him with the
glowing image of the fellow’s blood? He watched the
phenomenon, growing fainter, moving to the right-

96

SV’O ZMORE PARADES 97

hand top corner of the paper and turning a faintly
luminous green. He watched it with a grim irony.

Was he, he said to himself, to regard himself as
responsible for the fellow’s death? Was his inner
mentality going to present that claim upon him. That
would be absurd. The end of the earth! The absurd
end of the earth. . . . Yet that insignificant ass Levin
had that evening asserted the claim to go into his,
Tietjens of Groby’s, relations with his wife. That was
an end of the earth as absurd! It was the unthinkable
thing, as unthinkable as the theory that the officer
can be responsible for the death of the man. . . . But
the idea had certainly presented itself to him. How
could he be responsible for the death? In fact — in lit¬
eralness — he was. It had depended absolutely upon his
discretion whether the man should go home or not.
The man’s life or death had been in his hands. He
had followed the perfectly correct course. He had writ¬
ten to the police of the man’s home town, and the police
had urged him not to let the man come home. . . .
Extraordinary morality on the part of a police force!
The man, they begged, should not be sent home be¬
cause a prize-fighter was occupying his bed and laun¬
dry. . . . Extraordinary common sense, very likely.
. . . They probably did not want to get drawn into a
scrap with Red Evans of the Red Castle. . . .

For a moment he seemed to see ... he actually saw
. . . O Nine Morgan’s eyes, looking at him with a sort
of wonder, as they had looked when he had refused
the fellow his leave. ... A sort of wonder! Without
resentment, but with incredulity. As you might look
at God, you being very small and ten feet or so below
His throne when He pronounced some inscrutable judg¬
ment! . . . The Lord giveth home-leave, and the Lord

98 MORE PARADES

refuseth. . . . Probably not blessed, but queer, be the
name of God-Tietjens!

And at the thought of the man as he was alive
and of him now, dead, an immense blackness de¬
scended all over Tietjens. Pie said to himself: I am
very tired. Yet he was not ashamed. ... It was the
blackness that descends on you when you think of
your dead. ... It comes, at any time, over the bright¬
ness of sunlight, in the grey of evening, in the grey of
the dawn, at mess, on parade; it comes at the thought
of one man or at the thought of half a battalion that
you have seen, stretched out, under sheeting, the noses
making little pimples: or not stretched out, lying face
downwards, half buried. Or at the thought of dead
that you have never seen dead at all. . . . Suddenly
the light goes out. ... In this case it was because of
one fellow, a dirty enough man, not even very willing,
not in the least endearing, certainly contemplating de¬
sertion. . . . But your dead. . . Yours . . . Your
own. As if joined to your own identity by a black
cord. . . .

In the darkness outside, the brushing, swift, rhyth¬
mic pacing of an immense number of men went past, as
if they had been phantoms. A great number of men
in fours, carried forward, irresistibly, by the over¬
whelming will of mankind in ruled motion. The sides
of the hut were so thin that it was peopled by an in¬
numerable throng. A sodden voice, just at Tietjens’
head, chuckled: “For God’s sake, sergeant-major, stop
these - . I’m too - drunk to halt them. . . .”

It made for the moment no impression on Tietjens’
conscious mind. Men were going past. Cries went up
in the camp. Not orders, the men were still marching.
Cries.

^CO ZMORE PARADES 99

Tietjens’ lips — his mind was still with the dead —
said:

“That obscene Pitkins! . . . I’ll have him cashiered
for this. . . He saw an obscene subaltern, small,
with one eyelid that drooped.

He came awake at that. Pitkins was the subaltern
he had detailed to march the draft to the station and
go on to Bailleul under a boozy field officer of sorts.

McKechnie said from the other bed:

“That’s the draft back.”

Tietjens said:

“Good God! . . .”

McKechnie said to the batman:

“For God’s sake go and see if it is. Come back
at once. . . .”

The intolerable vision of the line, starving beneath
the moon, of grey crowds murderously elbowing back a
thin crowd in brown, zigzagged across the bronze light
in the hut. The intolerable depression that, in those
days, we felt — that all those millions were the play¬
things of ants busy in the miles of corridors beneath the
domes and spires that rise up over the central heart of
our comity, that intolerable weight upon the brain and
the limbs, descended once more on those two men lying
upon their elbows. As they listened their jaws fell
open. The long, polyphonic babble, rushing in from an
extended line of men stood easy, alone rewarded their
ears.

Tietjens said:

“That fellow won’t come back. . . . He can never
do an errand and come back. . . .” He thrust one
of his legs cumbrously out of the top of his flea-bag.
He said:

100

mORE PARADES

“By God, the Germans will be all over here in a
week’s time!”

He said to himself:

“If they so betray us from Whitehall that fellow
Levin has no right to pry into my matrimonial affairs.
It is proper that one’s individual feelings should be
sacrificed to the necessities of a collective entity. But
not if that entity is to be betrayed from above. Not
if it hasn’t the ten-millionth of a chance. . . .” He
regarded Levin’s late incursion on his privacy as in¬
quiries set afoot by the general. . . . Incredibly pain¬
ful to him: like a medical examination into nudities,
but perfectly proper. Old Campion had to assure him¬
self that the other ranks were not demoralized by the
spectacle of officers’ matrimonial infidelities. . . . But
such inquiries were not to be submitted to if the whole
show were one gigantic demoralization!

McKechnie said, in reference to Tietjens’ protruded
foot:

“There’s no good your going out. . . . Cowley will
get the men into their lines. He was prepared.” He
added: “If the fellows in Whitehall are determined to
do old Puffles in, why don’t they recall him?”

The legend was that an eminent personage in the
Government had a great personal dislike for the general
in command of one army — the general being nicknamed
Puffles. The Government, therefore, were said to be
starving his command of men so that disaster should
fall upon his command.

“They can recall generals easy enough,” McKechnie
went on, “or anyone else!”

A heavy dislike that this member of the lower middle
classes should have opinions on public affairs overcame
Tietjens. He exclaimed: “Oh, that’s all tripe!”

101

SSCO ZMORE PARADES

He was himself outside all contact with affairs by
now. But the other rumour in that troubled, host
had it that, as a political manoeuvre, the heads round
Whitehall — the civilian heads — were starving the army
of troops in order to hold over the allies of Great Brit¬
ain the threat of abandoning altogether the Western
Front. They were credited with threatening a strategic
manoeuvre on an immense scale in the Near East, per¬
haps really intending it, or perhaps to force the hands
of their allies over some political intrigue. These at¬
rocious rumours reverberated backwards and forwards
in the ears of all those millions under the black vault
of heaven. All their comrades in the line were to be
sacrificed as a rearguard to their departing host. That
whole land was to be annihilated as a sacrifice to one
vanity. Now the draft had been called back. That
seemed proof that the Government meant to starve the
line! McKechnie groaned:

“Poor - old Bird! . . . He’s booked. Eleven

months in the front line, he’s been. . . . Eleven
months! ... I was nine, this stretch. With him.”

He added:

“Get back into bed, old bean. . . . I’ll go and look
after the men if it’s necessary. . .

Tietjens said:

“You don’t so much as know where their lines are.
. . .” And sat listening. Nothing but the long roll
of tongues came to him. He said:

“Damn it! The men ought not to be kept standing
in the cold like that. . . .” Fury filled him beneath
despair. His eyes filled with tears. “God,” he said
to himself, “the fellow Levin presumes to interfere in
my private affairs. . . . Damn it,” he said again, “it’s

102

&CO MORE PARADES

like doing a little impertinence in a world that’s foun¬
dering. . .

The world was foundering.

“I’d go out,” he said, “but I don’t want to have to
put that filthy little Pitkins under arrest. He only
drinks because he’s shellshocked. He’s not man enough
else, the unclean little Noncomformist. . . .”

McKechnie said:

“Hold on! ... I’m a Presbyterian myself. . .

Tietjens answered:

“You would be! . . .” He said: “I beg your par¬
don. . . . There will be no more parades. . . . The
British Army is dishonoured for ever. . . .”

McKechnie said:

“That’s all right, old bean. . .

Tietjens exclaimed with sudden violence:

“What the hell are you doing in the officers’ lines?
. . . Don’t you know it’s a court-martial offence?”

He was confronted with the broad, mealy face of
his regimental quartermaster-sergeant, the sort of fel¬
low who wore an officer’s cap against the regulations,
with a Tommie’s silver-plated badge. A man deter¬
mined to get Sergeant-Major Cowley’s job. The man
had come in unheard under the roll of voices outside.
He said:

“Excuse me, sir, I took the liberty of knocking. . . .
The sergeant-major is in an epileptic fit. ... I wanted
your directions before putting the draft into the tents
with the other men. . . .” Having said that tenta¬
tively he hazarded cautiously: “The sergeant-major
throws these fits, sir, if he is suddenly woke up. . . .
And Second-Lieutenant Pitkins woke him very sud¬
denly. . . .”

Tietjens said:

3\C0 MORE PARADES 103

“So you took on you the job of a beastly informer
against both of them. ... I shan’t forget it.” He
said to himself:

“I’ll get this fellow one day . . .” and he seemed
to hear with pleasure the clicking and tearing of the
scissors as, inside three parts of a hollow square, they
cut off his stripes and badges.

McKechnie exclaimed:

“Good God, man, you aren’t going out in nothing
but your pyjamas. Put your slacks on under your
British warm. . . .”

Tietjens said:

“Send the Canadian sergeant-major to me at the
double. . . .” to the quarter. “My slacks are at the
tailor’s, being pressed.” His slacks were being pressed
for the ceremony of the signing of the marriage con¬
tract of Levin, the fellow who had interfered in his
private affairs. He continued into the mealy broad
face and vague eyes of the quartermaster: “You
know as well as I do that it was the Canadian sergeant-
major’s job to report to me. . . . I’ll let you off this
time, but, by God, if I catch you spying round the
officers’ lines again you are for a D.C.M. . . .”

He wrapped a coarse, Red Cross, grey-wool muffler
under the turned-up collar of his British warm.

“That swine,” he said to McKechnie, “spies on the
officers’ lines in the hope of getting a commission by

catching out - little squits like Pitkins, when they’re

drunk. ... I’m seven hundred braces down. Mor¬
gan does not know that I know that I’m that much
down. But you can bet he knows where they have
gone. . . .”

McKechnie said:

104 iMORE PARADES

“I wish you would not go out like that. . . . I’ll
make you some cocoa. . . .”

Tietjens said:

“I can’t keep the men waiting while I dress. . . .
I’m as strong as a horse. . . .”

He was out amongst the bitterness, the mist, and
the moongleams on three thousand rifle barrels, and
the voices. ... He was seeing the Germans pour
through a thin line, and his heart was leaden. ... A
tall, graceful man swam up against him and said,
through his nose, like any American:

“There has been a railway accident, due to the
French strikers. The draft is put back till three pip
emma the day after to-morrow, sir.”

Tietjens exclaimed:

“It isn’t countermanded?” breathlessly.

The Canadian sergeant-major said:

“No, sir. ... A railway accident. . . . Sabotage
by the French, they say. . . . Four Glamorganshire
sergeants, all nineteen-fourteen men, killed, sir, going
home on leave. But the draft is not cancelled. . . .”
Tietjens said:

“Thank God!”

The slim Canadian with his educated voice said:

“You’re thanking God, sir, for what’s very much
to our detriment. Our draft was ordered for Salonika
till this morning. The sergeant in charge of draft
returns showed me the name Salonika scored off in his
draft roster. Sergeant-Major Cowley had got hold
of the wrong story. Now it’s going up the line. The
other would have been a full two months’ more life for
us.”

The man’s rather slow voice seemed to continue for
a long time. As it went on Tietjens felt the sunlight

105

DC O {MORE PARADES

dwelling on his nearly coverless limbs, and the tide
of youth returning to his veins. It was like cham¬
pagne. He said:

“You sergeants get a great deal too much informa'
tion. The sergeant in charge of returns had no busi¬
ness to show you his roster. It’s not your fault, of
course. But you are an intelligent man. You can see
how useful that news might be to certain people:
people that it’s not to your own interest should know
these things. . . .” He said to himself : “A landmark
in history. . . .” And then: “Where the devil did
my mind get hold of that expression at this moment?”

They were walking in mist, down an immense lane,
one hedge of which was topped by the serrated heads
and irregularly held rifles that showed here and there.
He said to the sergeant-major: “Call ’em to atten¬
tion. Never mind their dressing, we’ve got to get ’em
into bed. Roll-call will be at nine to-morrow.”

His mind said:

“If this means the single command. . . . And it’s
bound to mean the single command, it’s the turning
point. . . . Why the hell am I so extraordinarily glad?
What’s it to me?”

He was shouting in a round voice:

“Now then, men, you’ve got to go six extra in a
tent. See if you can fall out six at a time at each tent.
It’s not in the drill book, but see if you can do it
for yourselves. You’re smart men: use your intelli¬
gences. The sooner you get to bed the sooner you’ll
be warm. I wish I was. Don’t disturb the men who’re
already in the tents. They’ve got to be up for fatigues
to-morrow at five, poor devils. You can lie soft till
three hours after that. . . . The draft will move to the
left in fours. . . . Form fours . . . Left . . .” Whilst

106

{MORE PARADES

the voices of the sergeants in charge of companies
yelped varyingly to a distance in the quick march order
he said to himself:

“Extraordinarily glad. ... A strong passion. . . .
How damn well these fellows move ! . . . Cannon fod¬
der. . . . Cannon fodder. . . . That’s what their
steps say. . . .” His whole body shook in the grip of
the cold that beneath his loose overcoat gnawed his
pyjamaed limbs. He could not leave the men, but can¬
tered beside them with the sergeant-major till he came
to the head of the column in the open in time to wheel
the first double company into a line of ghosts that were
tents, silent and austere in the moon’s very shadowy
light. ... It appeared to him a magic spectacle. He
said to the sergeant-major: “Move the second com¬
pany to B line, and so on,” and stood at the side of the
men as they wheeled, stamping, like a wall in motion.
He thrust his stick half-way down between the second
and third files. “Now then, a four and half a four to
the right; remaining half- four and next four to the left.
Fall out into first tents to right and left. . . .” He
continued saying “First four and half, this four to
the right. . . . Damn you, by the left! How can you
tell which beastly four you belong to if you don’t
march by the left. . . . Remember you’re soldiers,
not new-chum lumbermen. . . .”

It was sheer exhilaration to freeze there on the down¬
side in the extraordinarily pure air with the extra¬
ordinarily fine men. They came round, marking time
with the stamp of guardsmen. He said, with tears in
his voice:

“Damn it all, I gave them that extra bit of smart¬
ness. . . . Damn it all, there’s something I’ve done.
. . .” Getting cattle into condition for the slaughter-

107

DCO {MORE PARADES

house. . . . They were as eager as bullocks running
down by Camden Town to Smithfield Market. . . .
Seventy per cent, of them would never come back.
. . . But it’s better to go to heaven with your skin
shining and master of your limbs than as a hulking
lout. . . . The Almighty’s orderly room will welcome
you better in all probability. ... He continued ex¬
claiming monotonously . . . “ Remaining half-four and
next four to the left. . . . Hold your beastly tongues
when you fall out. I can’t hear myself give or¬
ders. . . .” It lasted a long time. Then they were
all swallowed up.

He staggered, his knees wooden-stiff with the cold,
and the cold more intense now the wall of men no
longer sheltered him from the wind, out along the
brink of the plateau to the other lines. It gave him
satisfaction to observe that he had got his men into
their lines seventy-five per cent, quicker than the best
of the N.C.O.’s who had had charge of the other lines.
Nevertheless, he swore bitingly at the sergeants: their
men were in knots round the entrance to the alleys of
ghost-pyramids. . . . Then there were no more, and
he drifted with regret across the plain towards his
country street of huts. One of them had a coarse ever¬
green rose growing over it. He picked a leaf, pressed
it to his lips and threw it up into the wind. . . .
“That’s for Valentine,” he said meditatively. “Why
did I do that? ... Or perhaps it’s for England. . . .”
He said: “Damn it all, this is patriotism! ... This
is patriotism. . . .” It wasn’t what you took patriot¬
ism as a rule to be. There were supposed to be more
parades about that job! . . . But this was just a broke
to the wide, wheezy, half-frozen Yorkshireman, who
despised every one in England not a Yorkshireman, or

108 W?0 {MORE PARADES

from more to the North, at two in the morning picking
a leaf from a rose-tree and slobbering over it, without
knowing what he was doing. And then discovering that
it was half for a pug-nosed girl whom he presumed,
but didn’t know, to smell like a primrose; and half
for . . . England! ... At two in the morning with
the thermometer ten degrees below zero. . . . Damn,
it was cold! . . .

And why these emotions? . . . Because England,
not before it was time, had been allowed to decide not
to do the dirty on her associates! . . . He said to
himself: “It is probably because a hundred thousand
sentimentalists like myself commit similar excesses of
the subconscious that we persevere in this glorious but
atrocious undertaking. All the same, I didn’t know I
had it in me!” A strong passion! . . . For his girl
and his country! . . . Nevertheless, his girl was a pro-
German. ... It was a queer mix-up! . . . Not of
course a pro-German, but disapproving of the prepara¬
tion of men, like bullocks, with sleek healthy skins
for the abattoirs in Smithfield. . . . Agreeing presum¬
ably with the squits who had been hitherto starving the
B.E.F. of men. . . . A queer mix-up. . . .

At half-past one the next day, in chastened winter
sunlight, he mounted Schomburg, a coffin-headed,
bright chestnut, captured from the Germans on the
Marne, by the second battalion of the Glamorgan-
shires. He had not been on the back of the animal
two minutes before he remembered that he had for¬
gotten to look it over. It was the first time in his life
that he had ever forgotten to look at an animal’s
hoofs, fetlocks, knees, nostrils and eyes, and to take a
pull at the girth before climbing into the saddle. But

&C O DA ORE PARADES 109

he had ordered the horse for a quarter to one and,
even though he had bolted his cold lunch like a cannibal
in haste, there he was three-quarters of an hour late,
and with his head still full of teasing problems. He
had meant to clear his head by a long canter over
the be-hutted downs, dropping down into the city by
a bypath.

But the ride did not clear his head — rather, the
sleeplessness of the night began for the first time then
to tell on him after a morning of fatigues, during which
he had managed to keep the thought of Sylvia at arm’s
length. He had to wait to see Sylvia before he could
see what Sylvia wanted. And morning had brought
the common-sense idea that probably she wanted to do
nothing more than pull the string of the showerbath —
which meant committing herself to the first extravagant
action that came into her head — and exulting in the
consequences.

He had not managed to get to bed at all the night
before. Captain McKechnie, who had had some cocoa
— a beverage Tietjens had never before tasted — hot
and ready for him on his return from the lines, had
kept him till past half-past four, relating with a male
fury his really very painful story. It appeared that
he had obtained leave to go home and divorce his wife,
who, during his absence in France, had been living
with an Egyptologist in Government service. Then,
acting under conscientious scruples of the younger
school of the day, he had refrained from divorcing
her. Campion had in consequence threatened to de¬
prive him of his commission. . . . The poor devil —
who had actually consented to contribute to the costs of
the household of his wife and the Egyptologist — had
gone raving mad and had showered an extraordinary

110

ZMORE PARADES

torrent of abuse at the decent old fellow that Campion
was. ... A decent old fellow, really. For the inter¬
view, being delicate, had taken place in the general’s
bedroom and the general had not felt it necessary,
there being no orderlies or junior officers present, to
take any official notice of McKechnie’s outburst.
McKechnie was a fellow with an excellent military
record; you could in fact hardly have found a regi¬
mental officer with a better record. So Campion had
decided to deal with the man as suffering from a tem¬
porary brain-storm and had sent him to Tietjen’s unit
for rest and recuperation. It was an irregularity, but
the general was of a rank to risk what irregularities he
considered to be of use to the service.

It had turned out that McKechnie was actually the
nephew of Tietjens’ very old intimate, Sir Vincent Mac-
master, of the Department of Statistics, being the son
of his sister who had married the assistant to the elder
Macmaster, a small grocer in the Port of Leith in
Scotland. . . . That indeed had been why Campion
had been interested in him. Determined as he was to
show his godson no unreasonable military favours, the
general was perfectly ready to do a kindness that he
thought would please Tietjens. All these pieces of
information Tietjens had packed away in his mind for
future consideration and, it being after four-thirty be¬
fore McKechnie had calmed himself down, Tietjens
had taken the opportunity to inspect the breakfasts of
the various fatigues ordered for duty in the town, these
being detailed for various hours from a quarter to
five to seven. It was a matter of satisfaction to Tiet¬
jens to have seen to the breakfasts, and inspected his
cook-houses, since he did not often manage to make

3^0 {MORE PARADES 111

the opportunity and he could by no means trust his
orderly officers.

At breakfast in the depot mess-hut he was detained
by the colonel in command of the depot, the Anglican
padre and McKechnie; the colonel, very old, so frail
that you would have thought that a shudder or a cough
would have shaken his bones one from another, had
yet a passionate belief that the Greek Church should
exchange communicants with the Anglican : the padre,
a stout, militant Churchman, had a gloomy contempt
for Orthodox theology. McKechnie from time to time
essayed to define the communion according to the Pres¬
byterian rite. They all listened to Tietjens whilst he
dilated on the historic aspects of the various schisms of
Christianity and accepted his rough definition to the
effect that, in transubstantiation, the host actually
became the divine presence, whereas in consubstantia-
tion the substance of the host, as if miraculously become
porous, was suffused with the presence as a sponge is
with water. . . . They all agreed that the breakfast
bacon supplied from store was uneatable and agreed to
put up half a crown a week a piece to get better for
their table.

Tietjens had walked in the sunlight down the lines,
past the hut with the evergreen climbing rose, in the
sunlight, thinking in an interval, good-humouredly
about his official religion: about the Almighty as, on a
colossal scale, a great English Landowner, benevolently
awful, a colossal duke who never left his study and was
thus invisible, but knowing all about the estate down
to the last hind at the home farm and the last oak:
Christ, an almost too benevolent Land-Steward, son of
the Owner, knowing all about the estate down to the
last child at the porter’s lodge, apt to be got round

112

5^0 MORE PARADES

by the more detrimental tenants: the Third Person of
the Trinity, the spirit of the estate, the Game as it
were, as distinct from the players of the game: the
atmosphere of the estate, that of the interior of Win¬
chester Cathedral just after a Handel anthem has been
finished, a perpetual Sunday, with, probably, a little
cricket for the young men. Like Yorkshire of a Satur¬
day afternoon; if you looked down on the whole broad
county you would not see a single village green with¬
out its white flannels. That was why Yorkshire always
leads the averages. . . . Probably by the time you got
to heaven you would be so worn out by work on this
planet that you would accept the English Sunday, for
ever, with extreme relief!

With his belief that all that was good in English
literature ended with the seventeenth century, his im¬
aginations of heaven must be materialist — like Bun-
yan’s. He laughed good-humouredly at his projection
of a hereafter. It was probably done with. Along
with cricket. There would be no more parades of that
sort. Probably they would play some beastly yelping
game. . . . Like baseball or Association football. . . .
And heaven? . . » Oh, it would be a revival meeting
on a Welsh hillside. Or Chatauqua, wherever that was.

. . . And God? A Real Estate Agent, with Marxist
views. . . . He hoped to be out of it before the cessa¬
tion of hostilities, in which case he might be just in time
for the last train to the old heaven. . . .

In his orderly hut he found an immense number of
papers. On the top an envelope marked Uygent.
Private with a huge rubber stamp. From Levin.
Levin, too, must have been up pretty late. It was
not about Mrs. Tietjens, or even Miss de Bailly. It
was a private warning that Tietjens would probably

113

{MORE PARADES

have his draft on his hands another week or ten days,
and very likely another couple of thousand men extra
as well. He warned Tietjens to draw all the tents he
could get hold of as soon as possible. . . . Tietjens
called to a subaltern with pimples who was picking
his teeth with a pen-nib at the other end of the hut:
“Here, you! . . . Take two companies of the Cana¬
dians to the depot store and draw all the tents you can
get up to two hundred and fifty. . . . Have ’em put
alongside my D lines. . . . Do you know how to look
after putting up tents? . . . Well then, get Thomp¬
son . . . no, Pitkins, to help you. . . .” The subal¬
tern drifted out sulkily. Levin said that the French
railway strikers, for some political reason, had sabo¬
taged a mile of railway, the accident of the night before
had completely blocked up all the lines, and the French
civilians would not let their own breakdown gangs make
any repairs. German prisoners had been detailed for
that fatigue, but probably Tietjens’ Canadian railway
corps would be wanted. He had better hold them in
readiness. The strike was said to be a manoeuvre for
forcing our hands — to get us to take over more of the
line. In that case they had jolly well dished them¬
selves, for how could we take over more of the line
without more men, and how could we send up more
men without the railway to send them by? We had
half a dozen army corps all ready to go. Now they
were all jammed. Fortunately the weather at the front
was so beastly that the Germans could not move. He
finished up “Four in the morning, old bean, a tantot!”
the last phrase having been learned from Mile de
Bailly. Tietjens grumbled that if they went on piling
up the work on him like this he would never get down
to the signing of that marriage contract.

114

£M0RE PARADES

He called the Canadian sergeant-major to him.

“See,” he said, “that you keep the Railway Service
Corps in camp with their arms ready, whatever their
arms are. Tools, I suppose. Are their tools all com¬
plete? And their muster roll?”

“Girtin has gone absent, sir,” the slim dark fellow
said, with an air of destiny. Girtin was the respectable
man with the mother to whom Tietjens had given the
two hours’ leave the night before.

Tietjens answered:

“He would have!” with a sour grin. It enhanced
his views of strictly respectable humanity. They
blackmailed you with lamentable and pathetic tales
and then did the dirty on you. He said to the sergeant-
major:

“You will be here for another week or ten days.
See that you get your tents up all right and the men
comfortable. I will inspect them as soon as I have
taken my orderly room. Full marching order. Captain
McKechnie will inspect their kits at two.”

The sergeant-major, stiff but graceful, had some¬
thing at the back of his mind. It came out:

“I have my marching orders for two-thirty this
afternoon. The notice for inserting my commission
in depot orders is on your table. I leave for the
O.T.C. by the three train. . . .”

Tietjens said:

“Your commission! . . .” It was a confounded
nuisance.

The sergeant-major said:

“Sergeant-Major Cowley and I applied for our com¬
missions three months ago. The communications
granting them are both on your table together. . .

Tietjens said:

£^0 zMORE PARADES 115

“Sergeant-Major Cowley. . . . Good Godl Who
recommended you?”

The whole organization of his confounded battalion
fell to pieces. It appeared that a circular had come
round three months before — before Tietjens had been
given command of that unit — asking for experienced
first-class warrant officers capable of serving as in¬
structors in Officers’ Training Corps, with commissions.
Sergeant-Major Cowley had been recommended by the
colonel of the depot, Sergeant-Major Ledoux by his
own colonel. Tietjens felt as if he had been let down—
but of course he had not been. It was just the way of
the army, all the time. You got a platoon, or a bat¬
talion, or, for the matter of that, a dug-out or a tent,
by herculean labours into good fettle. It ran all right
for a day or two, then it all fell to pieces, the personnel
scattered to the four winds by what appeared merely
wanton orders, coming from the most unexpected head¬
quarters, or the premises were smashed up by a chance
shell that might just as well have fallen somewhere
else. . . . The finger of Fate! . . .

But it put a confounded lot more work on him. . . .
He said to Sergeant-Major Cowley, whom he found in
the next hut where all the paper work of the unit was
done:

“I should have thought you would have been enor¬
mously better off as regimental sergeant-major than
with a commission. I know I would rather have the
job.” Cowley answered — he was very pallid and
shaken— that with his unfortunate infirmity, coming
on at any moment of shock, he would be better in a
job where he could slack off, like an O.T.C. He had
always been subject to small fits, over in a minute, or
couple of seconds even. ... But getting too near a

116

IMORE PARADES

H.E. shell— after Noircourt which had knocked out
Tietjens himself — had brought them on, violent. There
was also, he finished, the gentility to be considered.
Tietjens said:

“Oh, the gentility! . . . That’s not worth a flea’s
jump. . . . There won’t be any more parades after
this war. There aren’t any now. Look at who your
companions will be in an officer’s quarters; you’d be
in a great deal better society in any self-respecting
sergeants’ mess.” Cowley answered that he knew the
service had gone to the dogs. All the same his missis
liked it. And there was his daughter Winnie to be
considered. She had always been a bit wild, and his
missis wrote that she had gone wilder than ever, all
due to the war. Cowley thought that the bad boys
would be a little more careful how they monkeyed with
her if she was an officer’s daughter. . . . There was
probably something in that !

Coming out into the open, confidentially with Tiet¬
jens, Cowley dropped his voice huskily to say:

“Take Quartermaster-Sergeant Morgan for R.S.M.,
sir.”

Tietjens said explosively:

“I’m damned if I will.” Then he asked: “Why?”
The wisdom of old N.C.O.’s is a thing no prudent officer
neglects.

“He can do the work, sir,” Cowley said. “He’s
out for a commission, and he’ll do his best. . . .” He
dropped his husky voice to a still greater depth of
mystery:

“You’re over two hundred — I should say nearer three
hundred — pounds down in your battalion stores. I
don’t suppose you want to lose a sum of money like
that?”

117

IMORE PARADES

Tietjens said:

“I’m damned if I do. . . . But I don’t see. . . .
Oh, yes, I do. ... If I make him sergeant-major he
has to hand over the stores all complete. . . . To¬
day. . . . Can he do it?”

Cowley said that Morgan could have till the day
after to-morrow. He would look after things till then.

“But you’ll want to have a flutter before you go,”
Tietjens said. “Don’t stop for me.”

Cowley said that he would stop and see the job
through. He had thought of going down into the town
and having a flutter. But the girls down there were
a common sort, and it was bad for his complaint. . . .
He would stop and see what could be done with
Morgan. Of course it was possible that Morgan might
decide to face things out. He might prefer to stick to
the money he’d got by disposing of Tietjens’ stores
to other battalions that were down, or to civilian con¬
tractors. And stand a court martial! But it wasn’t
likely. He was a Noncomformist deacon, or pew-
opener, or even a minister possibly, at home in Wales.
. . . From near Denbigh! And Cowley had got a
very good man, a first-class man, an Oxford professor,
now a lance-corporal at the depot, for Morgan’s place.
The colonel would lend him to Tietjens and would get
him rated acting quartermaster-sergeant unpaid. . . .
Cowley had it all arranged. . . . Lance-Corporal
Caldicott was a first-class man, only he could not tell
his right hand from his left on parade. Literally could
not tell them. . . .

So the battalion settled itself down. . . . Whilst
Cowley and he were at the colonel’s orderly room
arranging for the transfer of the professor — he was
really only a fellow of his college — who did not know

118

^0 {MORE PARADES

his right hand from his left, Tietjens was engaged in
the remains of the colonel’s furious argument as to the
union of the Anglican and Eastern rites. The colonel
• — he was a full colonel — sat in his lovely private office,
a light, gay compartment of a tin-hutment, the walls
being papered in scarlet, with, on the purplish, thick,
soft baize of his table-cover, a tall glass vase from
which sprayed out pale Riviera roses, the gift of young
lady admirers amongst the V.A.D.’s in the town because
he was a darling, and an open, very gilt and leather-
bound volume of a biblical encyclopaedia beneath his
delicate septuagenarian features. He was confirming
his opinion that a union between the Church of England
and the Greek Orthodox Church was the only thing
that could save civilization. The whole war turned
on that. The Central Empires represented Roman
Catholicism, the Allies Protestantism and Orthodoxy.
Let them unite. The papacy was a traitor to the cause
of civilization. Why had the Vatican not protested
with no uncertain voice about the abominations prac¬
tised on the Belgian Catholics? . . .

Tietjens pointed out languidly objections to this
theory. The first thing our ambassador to the Vatican
had found out on arriving in Rome and protesting
about massacres of Catholic laymen in Belgium was
that the Russians before they had been a day in Aus¬
trian Poland had hanged twelve Roman Catholic
bishops in front of their palaces.

Cowley was engaged with the adjutant at another
table. The colonel ended his theologico-political tirade
by saying:

“I shall be very sorry to lose you, Tietjens. I don’t
know what we shall do without you. I never had a
moment’s peace with your unit until you came.”

119

&£0 {MORE PARADES

Tietjens said:

“Well, you aren’t losing me, sir, as far as I know.”

The colonel said:

“Oh, yes, we are. You are going up the line next
week. . . .” He added: “Now, don’t get angry
with me. . . . I’ve protested very strongly to old Cam¬
pion — General Campion — that I cannot do without
you.” And he made, with his delicate, thin, hairy-
Packed, white hands a motion as of washing.

The ground moved under Tietjens’ feet. He felt
himself clambering over slopes of mud with his heavy
legs and labouring chest. He said:

“Damn it all! ... I’m not fit. . . . I’m C3. . . .
I was ordered to live in an hotel in the town. ... I
only mess here to be near the battalion.”

The colonel said with some eagerness:

“Then you can protest to Garrison. ... I hope you
will. . . . But 1 suppose you are the sort of fellow
that won’t.”

Tietjens said:

“No, sir. ... Of course I cannot protest. . . .
Though it’s probably a mistake of some clerk. ... I
could not stand a week in the line. . . .” The pro¬
found misery of brooding apprehension in the line was
less on his mind than, precisely, the appalling labour
of the lower limbs when you live in mud to the neck.

. . . Besides, whilst he had been in hospital, practically
the whole of his equipment had disappeared from his
kitbag — including Sylvia’s two pair of sheets! — and he
had no money with which to get more. He had not
even any trench-boots. Fantastic financial troubles
settled on his mind.

The colonel said to the adjutant at the other purple
baize-covered table:

120

{MORE PARADES

“Show Captain Tietjens those marching orders of
his. . . . Thejr’re from Whitehall, aren’t they? . . .
You never know where these things come from now¬
adays. I call them the arrow that flieth by night!”

The adjutant, a diminutive, a positively miniature
gentleman with Coldstream badges up and a dread¬
fully worried brow, drifted a quarto sheet of paper out
of a pile, across his tablecloth towards Tietjens. His
tiny hands seemed about to fall off at the wrists; his
temples shuddered with neuralgia. He said:

“For God’s sake do protest to Garrison if you feel
you can. . . . We can’t have more work shoved on
us. . . . Major Lawrence and Major Halkett left the
whole of the work of your unit to us. . . .”

The sumptuous paper, with the royal arms embossed
at the top, informed Tietjens that he would report to
his Vlth battalion on the Wednesday of next week in
preparation for taking up the duties of divisional
transport officer to the XIXth division. The order
came from room G 14 R, at the War Office. He asked
what the deuce G 14 R was, of the adjutant, who in
an access of neuralgic agony, shook his head miserably,
between his two hands, his elbows on the tablecloth.

Sergeant-Major Cowley, with his air of a solicitor’s
clerk, said the room G 14 R was the department that
dealt with civilian requests for the services of officers.
To the adjutant who asked what the devil a civilian
request for the employment of officers could have to
do with sending Captain Tietjens to the XIXth divi¬
sion, Sergeant-Major Cowley presumed that it was be¬
cause of the activities of the Earl of Beichan. The
Earl of Beichan, a Levantine financier and race-horse
owner, was interesting himself in army horses, after
a short visit to the lines of communication. He also

121

&C0 ZMORE PARADES

owned several newspapers. So they had been waking
up the army transport-animals’ department to please
him. The adjutant would no doubt have observed a
Veterinary-Lieutenant Hotchkiss or Hitchcock. He
had come to them through G 14 R. At the request of
Lord Beichan, who was personally interested in Lieu¬
tenant Hotchkiss’s theories. He was to make experi¬
ments on the horses of the Fourth Army— in which the
XIXth division was then to be found. . . . “So,”
Cowley said, “you’ll be under him as far as your
horse lines go. If you go up.” Perhaps Lord Beichan
was a friend of Captain Tietjens and had asked for
him, too: Captain Tietjens was known to be wonder¬
ful with horses.

Tietjens, his breath rushing through his nostrils,
swore he would not go up the line at the bidding of a
hog like Beichan, whose real name was Stavropolides,
formerly Nathan.

He said the army was reeling to its base because of
the continual interference of civilians. Lie said it was
absolutely impossible to get through his programmes
of parades because of the perpetual extra drills that
were forced on them at the biddings of civilians. Any
fool who owned a newspaper, nay, any fool who could
write to a newspaper, or any beastly little squit of a
novelist could frighten the Government and the War
Office into taking up one more hour of the men’s
parade time for patent manoeuvres with jampots or
fancy underclothing. Now he was asked if his men
wanted lecturing on the causes of the war and whether
he — he, good God! — would not like to give the men
cosy chats on the nature of the Enemy nations. . . .

The colonel said:

“There, there, Tietjens! . . . There, there! . . .

122

{MORE PARADES

We all suffer alike. We’ve got to lecture our men on
the uses of a new patent sawdust stove. If you don’t
want that job, you can easily get the general to take
you off it. They say you can turn him round your
little finger. . .

“He’s my godfather,” Tietjens thought it wise to
say. “I never asked him for a job, but I’m damned
if it isn’t his duty as a Christian to keep me out of the
clutches of this Greek-’Ebrew pagan peer. . . . He’s
not even Orthodox, colonel. . .

The adjutant here said that Colour-Sergeant Mor¬
gan of their orderly room wanted a word with Tietjens.
Tietjens said he hoped to goodness that Morgan had
some money for him! The adjutant said he understood
that Morgan had unearthed quite a little money that
ought to have been paid to Tietjens by his agents and
hadn’t.

Colour-Sergeant Morgan was the regimental magi¬
cian with figures. Inordinately tall and thin, his body,
whilst his eyes peered into distant columns of cyphers,
appeared to be always parallel with the surface of his
table and, as he always answered the several officers
whom he benefited without raising his head, his face
was very little known to his superiors. He was, how¬
ever, in appearance a very ordinary, thin, N.C.O.
whose spidery legs, when very rarely he appeared on
a parade, had the air of running away with him as a
race-horse might do. He told Tietjens that, pursuant
to his instructions and the A.C.P. i 96 b that Tietjens
had signed, he had ascertained that command pay at
the rate of two guineas a day and supplementary fuel
and light allowance at the rate of 65. 8 d. was being
paid weekly by the Paymaster-General’s Department
to his, Tietjens’, account at his agents’. He suggested

P\ CO ZMORE PARADES 123

that Tietjens should write to his agents that if they
did not immediately pay to his account the sum of
£194 135-. 4 d., by them received from the Paymaster’s
Department, he would proceed against the Crown by
Petition of Right. And he strongly recommended
Tietjens to draw a cheque on his own bank for the
whole of the money because, if by any chance the
agents had not paid the money in, he could sue them
for damages and get them cast in several thousand
pounds. And serve the devils right. They must have
a million or so in hand in unpaid command and de¬
tention allowances due to officers. He only wished he
could advertise in the papers offering to recover unpaid
sums due by agents. He added that he had a nice
little computation as to variations in the course of
Gunter’s Second Comet that he would like to ask
Tietjen’s advice about one of these days. The colour-
sergeant was an impassioned amateur astronomer.

So Tietjens’ morning went up and down. . . . The
money at the moment, Sylvia being in that town, was
of tremendous importance to him and came like an
answer to prayer. It was not so agreeable, however,
even in a world in which, never, never, never for ten
minutes did you know whether you stood on your
head or your heels, for Tietjens, on going back to the
colonel’s private office, to find Sergeant-Major Cowley
coming out of the next room in which, on account of
the adjutant’s neuralgia, the telephone was kept.
Cowley announced to the three of them that the
general had the day before ordered his correspondence-
corporal to send a very emphatic note to' Colonel
Gillum to the effect that he was informing the compe¬
tent authority that he had no intention whatever of
parting with Captain Tietjens, who was invaluable in

124 fA CO MORE PARADES

his command. The correspondence-corporal had in¬
formed Cowley that neither he nor the general knew
who was the competent authority for telling Room
G 14 R at the War Office to go to hell, but the matter
would be looked up and put all right before the chit
was sent off. . . .

That was good as far as it went. Tietjens was really
interested in his present job, and although he would
have liked well enough to have the job of looking after
the horses of a division, or even an army, he felt that
he would rather it was put off till the spring, given the
weather they were having and the state of his chest.
And the complication of possible troubles with Lieu¬
tenant Hotchkiss who, being a professor, had never
really seen a horse — or not for ten years! — was some¬
thing to be thought about very seriously. But all this
appeared quite another matter when Cowley announced
that the civilian authority who had asked for Tietjens’
transfer was the permanent secretary to the Ministry of
Transport. . . .

Colonel Gillum said:

“That’s your brother, Mark. . . And indeed
the permanent secretary to the Ministry of Transport
was Tietjens’ brother Mark, known as the Indispens¬
able Official. Tietjens felt a real instant of dismay.
He considered that his violent protest against the job
would appear rather a smack in the face for poor old
wooden-featured Mark who had probably taken a good
deal of trouble to get him the job. Even if Mark
should never hear of it, a man should not slap his
brother in the face! Moreover, when he came to think
of his last day in London, he remembered that Valen¬
tine Wannop, who had exaggerated ideas as to the
safety of First Line Transport, had begged Mark to

mo RE PARADES 125

get him a job as divisional officer. . . . And he im¬
agined Valentine’s despair if she heard that he —
Tietjens — had moved heaven and earth to get out of it.
He saw her lower lip quivering and the tears in her
eyes. . . . But he probably had got that from some
novel, because he had never seen her lower lip quiver.
He had seen tears in her eyes!

He hurried back to his lines to take his orderly
room. In the long hut McKechnie was taking that
miniature court of drunks and defaulters for him and,
just as Tietjens reached it, he was taking the case of
Girtin and two other Canadian privates. . . . The case
of Girtin interested him, and when McKechnie slid
out of his seat Tietjens occupied it. The prisoners were
only just being marched in by a Sergeant Davis, an
admirable N.C.O. whose rifle appeared to be part of his
rigid body and who executed an amazing number of
stamps in seriously turning in front of the C.O.’s table.
It gave the impression of an Indian war dance. . . .

Tietjens glanced at the charge sheet, which was
marked as coming from the Provost-Marshal’s Office.
Instead of the charge of absence from draft he read
that of conduct prejudicial to good order and military
discipline in that. . . . The charge was written in a
very illiterate hand; an immense beery lance-corporal
of Garrison Military Police, with a red hat-band, at¬
tended to give evidence. ... It was a tenuous and
disagreeable affair. Girtin had not gone absent, so
Tietjens had to revise his views of the respectable.
At any rate of the respectable Colonial private soldier
with mother complete. For there really had been a
mother, and Girtin had been seeing her into the last
tram down into the town. A frail old lady. Appar¬
ently, trying to annoy the Canadian, the beery lance-

126

D£0 IMORE PARADES

corporal of the Garrison Military Police had hustled
the mother. Girtin had remonstrated; very moder¬
ately, he said. The lance-corporal had shouted at him.
Two other Canadians returning to camp had intervened
and two more police. The police had called the Cana¬
dians - conscripts, which was almost more than

the Canadians could stand, they being voluntarily
enlisted 1914 or 1915 men. The police — it was an
old trick — had kept the men talking until two minutes
after the last post had sounded and then had run them
in for being absent off pass — and for disrespect to their
red hat-bands.

Tietjens, with a carefully measured fury, first cross-
examined and then damned the police witness to hell.
Then he marked the charge sheets with the words
“Case explained,” and told the Canadians to go and
get ready for his parade. It meant he was aware a
frightful row with the provost-marshal, who was a port-
winey old general called O’Hara and loved his police
as if they had been ewe-lambs.

He took his parade, the Canadian troops looking
like real soldiers in the sunlight, went round his lines
with the new Canadian sergeant-major, who had his
appointment, thank goodness, from his own authorities;
wrote a report on the extreme undesirability of lectur¬
ing his men on the causes of the war, since his men
were either graduates of one or other Canadian uni¬
versity and thus knew twice as much about the causes
of the war as any lecturer the civilian authorities could
provide, or else they were half-breed Micamuc In¬
dians, Esquimaux, Japanese, or Alaskan Russians,
none of whom could understand any English lecturer.

. . . He was aware that he would have to re-write his
report so as to make it more respectful to the news-

127

D£0 {MORE PARADES

paper proprietor peer who, at that time, was urging
on the home Government the necessity of lecturing all
the subjects of His Majesty on the causes of the war.
But he wanted to get that grouse off his chest and
its disrespect would pain Levin, who would have to deal
with these reports if he did not get married first. Then
he lunched off army sausage-meat and potatoes,
mashed with their skins complete, watered with an
admirable 1906 brut champagne which they bought
themselves, and an appalling Canadian cheese — at the
headquarters table to which the colonel had invited
all the subalterns who that day were going up the
line for the first time. They had some h’s in their
compositions, but in revenge they must have boasted
of a pint of adenoid growths between them. There
was, however, a charming young half-caste Goa second-
lieutenant, who afterwards proved of an heroic bravery.
He gave Tietjens a lot of amusing information as to
the working of the purdah in Portuguese India.

So, at half-past one Tietjens sat on Schomburg, the
coffin-headed, bright chestnut from the Prussian horse-
raising establishment near Celle. Almost a pure
thoroughbred, this animal had usually the paces of
a dining-room table, its legs being fully as stiff. But
to-day its legs might have been made of cotton-wool,
it lumbered over frosty ground breathing stertorously
and, at the jumping ground of the Deccan Horse, a mile
above and behind Rouen, it did not so much refuse a
very moderate jump as come together in a lugubrious
crumple. It was, in the light of a red, jocular sun, like
being mounted on a broken-hearted camel. In addi¬
tion, the fatigues of the morning beginning to tell,
Tietjens was troubled by an obsession of O Nine
Morgan which he found tiresome to have to stall off.

128

5^0 MORE PARADES

“What the hell,” he asked of the orderly, a very
silent private on a roan beside him, “what the hell is
the matter with his horse? . . . Have you been keep¬
ing him warm?” He imagined that the clumsy paces
of the animal beneath him added to his gloomy obses¬
sions.

The orderly looked straight in front of him over a
valley full of hutments. He said:

“No, sir.” The ’oss ’ad been put in the ’oss-stand-
ings of G depot. By the orders of Lieutenant ’Itch-
cock. ’Osses, Lieutenant ’Itchcock said, ’ad to be
’ardened.

Tietjens said:

“Did you tell him that it was my orders that Schom-
burg was to be kept warm? In the stables of the
farm behind No. XVI I.B.D.”

“The lieutenant,” the orderly explained woodenly,
“said as ’ow henny departure f’m ’is orders would be
visited by the extreme displeasure of Lord Breech’em,
K.C.V.O., K.C.B., etcetera.” The orderly was quiver¬
ing with rage.

“You will,” Tietjens said very carefully, “when you
fall out with the horses at the Hotel de la Poste, take
Schomburg and the roan to the stables of La Volonte
Farm, behind No. XVI I.B.D.” The orderly was to
close all the windows of the stable, stopping up any
chinks with wadding. He would procure, if possible, a
sawdust stove, new pattern, from Colonel Gillum’s
store and light it in the stables. He was also to give
Schomburg and the roan oatmeal and water warmed
as hot as the horses would take it. . . . And Tietjens
finished sharply, “If Lieutenant Hotchkiss makes any
comments, you will refer him to me. As his C.O.”

ZMORE PARADES 129

The orderly seeking information as to horse-ailments,
Tietjens said:

“The school of horse-copers, to which Lord Beichan
belongs, believes in the hardening of all horse-flesh
other than racing cattle.” They bred racing-cattle.
Under six blankets apiece! Personally Tietjens did not
believe in the hardening process and would not permit
any animal over which he had control to be submitted
to it. . . . It had been observed that if any animal
was kept at a lower temperature than that of its normal
climatic condition it would contract diseases to which
ordinarily it was not susceptible. ... If you keep a
chicken for two days in a pail of water it will contract
human scarlet-fever or mumps if injected with either
bacillus. If you remove the chicken from the water,
dry it, and restore it to its normal conditions, the
scarlet- fever or the mumps will die out of the animal.
. . . He said to the orderly: “You are an intelligent
man. What deduction do you draw?”

The orderly looked away over the valley of the
Seine.

“I suppose, sir,” he said, “that our ’osses, being
kept alwise cold in their standings, ’as hillnesses they
wouldn’t otherwise ’ave.”

“Well then,” Tietjens said, “keep the poor animals
warm.”

He considered that here was the makings of a very
nasty row for himself if, by any means, his sayings
came round to the ears of Lord Beichan. But that he
had to chance. He could not let a horse for which
he was responsible be martyred. . . . There was too
much to think about ... so that nothing at all stood
out to be thought of. The sun was glowing. The
valley of the Seine was blue-grey, like a Gobelin tapes-

130 3^0 DA ORE PARADES

try. Over it all hung the shadow of a deceased Welsh
soldier. An odd skylark was declaiming over an empty
field behind the incinerators’ headquarters. ... An
odd lark. For as a rule larks do not sing in December.
Larks sing only when courting, or over the nest. . . .
The bird must be oversexed. O Nine Morgan was the
other thing, that accounting for the prize-fighter!

They dropped down a mud lane between brick walls
into the town. . . .

PART II

CHAPTER I

In the admirably appointed, white-enamelled,
wickerworked, bemirrored lounge of the best hotel of
that town Sylvia Tietjens sat in a wickerwork chair,
not listening rather abstractedly to a staff-major who
was lachrymosely and continuously begging her to leave
her bedroom door unlocked that night. She said:

“I don’t know. . . . Yes, perhaps. ... I don’t
know. . . .” And looked distantly into a bluish wall-
mirror that, like all the rest, was framed with white-
painted cork bark. She stiffened a little and said:

“There’s Christopher!”

The staff-major dropped his hat, his stick and his
gloves. His black hair, which was without parting
and heavy with some preparation of a glutinous kind,
moved agitatedly on his scalp. He had been saying
that Sylvia had ruined his life. Didn’t Sylvia know
that she had ruined his life? But for her he might
have married some pure young thing. Now he ex¬
claimed:

“But what does he want? . . . Good God! . . .
what does he want?”

“He wants,” Sylvia said, “to play the part of Jesus
Christ.”

Major Perowne exclaimed:

“Jesus Christ! . . . But he’s the most foul-mouthed
officer in the general’s command. . . .”

132 £^0 [MORE PARADES

“Well,” Sylvia said, “if you had married your pure
young thing she’d have . . . What is it? . . . cuck¬
olded you within nine months. . . .”

Perowne shuddered a little at the word. He mum¬
bled:

“I don’t see. ... It seems to be the other
way . . .”

“Oh, no, it isn’t,” Sylvia said. “Think it over. . . .
Morally, you’re the husband. . . . /^morally, I should
say. . . . Because he’s the man I want. . . . He looks
ill. . . . Do hospital authorities always tell wives what
is the matter with their husbands?”

From his angle in the chair from which he had half-
emerged Sylvia seemed to him to be looking at a blank
wall.

“I don’t see him,” Perowne said.

“I can see him in the glass,” Sylvia said. “Look!
From here you can see him.”

Perowne shuddered a little more.

“I don’t want to see him. ... I have to see him
sometimes in the course of duty. ... I don’t like
to . . . .”

Sylvia said:

“You,” in a tone of very deep contempt. “You only
carry chocolate boxes to flappers. . . . How can he
come across you in the course of duty? . . . You’re
not a soldier !”

Perowne said:

“But what are we going to do? What will he do?”

“I,” Sylvia answered, “shall tell the page-boy when
he comes with his card to say that I’m engaged. . . .
I don’t know what he’ll do. Hit you, very likely. . . .
He’s looking at your back now. . . .”

Perowne became rigid, sunk into his deep chair.

D£0 {MORE PARADES 133

“But he couldn’t!” he exclaimed agitatedly. “You
said that he was playing the part of Jesus Christ.
Our Lord wouldn’t hit people in an hotel lounge. . . .”

“Our Lord!” Sylvia said contemptuously. “What
do you know about our Lord? . . . Our Lord was
a gentleman. . . . Christopher is playing at being our
Lord calling on the woman taken in adultery. . . .
He’s giving me the social backing that his being my
husband seems to him to call for.”

A one-armed, bearded maitre d’hotel approached
them through groups of arm-chairs arranged for
tete-a-tete. He said:

“Pardon ... I did not see madame at first. . . .”
And displayed a card on a salver. Without looking
at it, Sylvia said:

“ Dites a ce monsieur . . . that I am occupied.” The
maitre d’ hotel moved austerely away.

“But he’ll smash me to pieces . . .” Perowne ex¬
claimed. “What am I to do? . . . What the deuce am
I to do?” There would have been no way of exit for
him except across Tietjens’ face.

With her spine very rigid and the expression of a
snake that fixes a bird, Sylvia gazed straight in front
of her and said nothing until she exclaimed:

“For God’s sake leave off trembling. . . . He would
not do anything to a girl like you. . . . He’s a man.

. . .” The wickerwork of Perowne’s chair had been
crepitating as if it had been in a railway car. The
sound ceased with a jerk. . . . Suddenly she clenched
both her hands and let out a hateful little breath of
air between her teeth.

“By the immortal saints,” she exclaimed, “I swear
I’ll make his wooden face wince yet.”

134

WO MORE PARADES

In the bluish looking-glass, a few minutes before,
she had seen the agate-blue eyes of her husband, thirty
feet away, over arm-chairs and between the fans of
palms. He was standing, holding a riding-whip, look¬
ing rather clumsy in the uniform that did not suit him.
Rather clumsy and worn out, but completely expres¬
sionless! He had looked straight into the reflection
of her eyes and then looked away. He moved so that
his profile was towards her, and continued gazing
motionless at an elk’s head that decorated the space of
wall above glazed doors giving into the interior of the
hotel. The hotel servant approaching him, he had
produced a card and had given it to the servant, utter¬
ing three words. She saw his lips move in the three
words: Mrs. Christopher Tietjens. She said, beneath
her breath:

“Damn his chivalry! . . . Oh, God damn his chiv¬
alry!” She knew what was going on in his mind. He
had seen her, with Perowne, so he had neither come
towards her nor directed the servant to where she sat.
For fear of embarrassing her! He would leave it to
her to come to him if she wished.

The servant, visible in the mirror, had come and
gone deviously back, Tietjens still gazing at the elk’s
head. He had taken the card and restored it to his
pocket-book and then had spoken to the servant. The
servant had shrugged his shoulders with the formal
hospitality of his class and, with his shoulders still
shrugged and his one hand pointing towards the inner
door, had preceded Tietjens into the hotel. Not one
line of Tietjens’ face had moved when he had received
back his card. It had been then that Sylvia had
sworn that she would yet make his wooden face
wince. . . .

135

^CO cMORE PARADES

His face was intolerable. Heavy; fixed. Not inso¬
lent, but simply gazing over the heads of all things
and created beings, into a word too distant for them
to enter. . . . And yet it seemed to her, since he was
so clumsy and worn out, almost not sporting to perse¬
cute him. It was like whipping a dying bulldog.

She sank back into her chair with a movement almost
of discouragement. She said:

“He’s gone into the hotel. . . .”

Perowne lurched agitatedly forward in his chair. He
exclaimed that he was going. Then he sank discour-
agedly back again:

“No, I’m not,” he said, “I’m probably much safer
here. I might run against him going out.”

“You’ve realized that my petticoats protect you,”
Sylvia said contemptuously. “Of course, Christopher
would never hit anyone in my presence.”

Major Perowne was interrupting her by asking:

“What’s he going to do? What’s he doing in the
hotel?”

Mrs. Tietjens said:

“Guess!” She added: “What would you do in
similar circumstances?”

“Go and wreck your bedroom,” Perowne answered
with promptitude. “It’s what I did when I found you
had left Yssingueux.”

Sylvia said:

“Ah, that was what the place was called.”

Perowne groaned :

“You’re callous,” he said. “There’s no other word
for it. Callous. That’s what you are.”

Sylvia asked absently why he called her callous at
just that juncture. She was imagining Christopher
stumping clumsily along the hotel corridor looking at

136 SV’O WIORE PARADES

bedrooms, and then giving the hotel servant a hand¬
some tip to ensure that he should be put on the same
floor as herself. She could almost hear his not dis¬
agreeable male voice that vibrated a little from the

chest and made her vibrate. .

Perowne was grumbling on. Sylvia was callous be¬
cause she had forgotten the name of the Brittany
hamlet in which they had spent three blissful weeks
together, though she had left it so suddenly that all
her outfit remained in the hotel. „

“Well, it wasn’t any kind of a beanfeast for me,
Sylvia went on, when she again gave him her attention.
“Good heavens! ... Do you think it would be any
kind of a beanfeast with you, pour tout potage? Why
should I remember the name of the hateful place?

Perowne said:

“Yssingueux-les-Pervenches, such a pretty name,
reproachfully.

“It’s no good,” Sylvia answered, “your trying to
awaken sentimental memories in me. You will have
to make me forget what you were like if you want to
carry on with me. . . . I’m stopping here and listening
to your corncrake of a voice because I want to wait
until Christopher goes out of the hotel . . . Then I
am going to my room to tidy up for Lady Sachse s
party and you will sit here and wait for me.

“I’m not,” Perowne said, “going to Lady Sachse’s.
Why, he is going to be one of the principal witnesses
to sign the marriage contract. And Old Campion and
all the rest of the staff are going to be there. . . .
You don’t catch me. ... An unexpected prior engage¬
ment is my line. No fear.”

“You’ll come with me, my little man,” Sylvia said,
“if you ever want to bask in my smile again. . . .

t KO l MORE PARADES 137

I’m not going to Lady Sachse’s alone, looking as if I
couldn t catch a man to escort me, under the eyes of
half the French house of peers. ... If they’ve got
a house of peers! . . . You don’t catch me. . . . No
fear!” she mimicked his creaky voice. “You can
go away as soon as you’ve shown yourself as my
escort. . . .”

“But, good God!” Perowne cried out, “that’s just
what I mustn’t do. Campion said that if he heard any
more of my being seen about with you he would have
me sent back to my beastly regiment. And my beastly
regiment is in the trenches. . . . You don’t see me in
the trenches, do you?”

“I’d rather see you there than in my own room,”
Sylvia said. “Any day!”

“Ah, there you are!” Perowne exclaimed with ani¬
mation. “What guarantee have I that if I do what
you want I shall bask in your smile as you call it?
I’ve got myself into a most awful hole, bringing you
here without any papers. You never told me you
hadn’t any papers. General O’Hara, the P.M., has
raised a most awful strafe about it. . . . And what
have I got for it? . . . Not the ghost of a smile. . . .
And you should see old O’Hara’s purple face! . . .
Someone woke him from his afternoon nap to report to
him about your heinous case and he hasn’t recovered
from the indigestion yet. . . . Besides, he hates
Tietjens . . . Tietjens is always chipping away at his
military police . . . O’Hara’s lambs. . . .”

Sylvia was not listening, but she was smiling a slow
smile at an inward thought. It maddened him.

“What’s your game?” he exclaimed. “Hell and
hounds, what’s your game? . . . You can’t have come

138

WO Of ORE PARADES

here to see . . . him. You don’t come here to see me,
as far as I can see. Well then . . .”

Sylvia looked round at him with all her eyes, wide
open as if she had just awakened from a deep sleep.

“I didn’t know I was coming,” she said. “It came
into my head to come suddenly. Ten minutes before I
started. And I came. I didn’t know papers were
wanted. I suppose I could have got them if I had
wanted them. . . . You never asked me if I had any
papers. You just froze on to me and had me into
your special carriage. ... I didn’t know you were
coming.”

That seemed to Perowne the last insult. He ex¬
claimed:

“Oh, damn it, Sylvia! you must have known. . . .
You were at the Quirks’ squash on Wednesday even¬
ing. And they knew. My best friends.”

“Since you ask for it,” she said, “I didn’t know.
. . . And I would not have come by that train if I
had known you would be going by it. You force me
to say rude things to you.” She added: “Why can’t
you be more conciliatory?” to keep him quiet for a
little. His jaw dropped down.

She was wondering where Christopher had got the
money to pay for a bed at the hotel. Only a very short
time before she had drawn all the balance of his bank¬
ing account, except for a shilling. It was the middle
of the month and he could not have drawn any more
pay. . . . That, of course, was a try on her part.
He might be forced into remonstrating. In the same
way she had tried on the accusation that he had car¬
ried off her sheets. It was sheer wilfulness, and when
she looked again at his motionless features she knew
that she had been rather stupid. ... But she was at

zyo {MORE PARADES 139

the end of her tether : she had before now tried making
accusations against her husband, but she had never
tried inconveniencing him. . . . Now she suddenly
realized the full stupidity of which she had been
guilty. He would know perfectly well that those petty
frightfulnesses of hers were not in the least in her note;
so he would know, too, that each of them was just
a try on. He would say: “She is trying to make
me squeal. I’m damned if I will!”

She would have to adopt much more formidable
methods. She said: “He shall ... he shall . . .
he shall come to heel.”

Major Perowne had now closed his jaw. He was
reflecting. Once he mumbled: “More conciliatory!
Holy smoke!”

She was feeling suddenly in spirits: it was the sight
of Christopher had done it: the perfect assurance that
they were going to live under the same roof again.
She would have betted all she possessed and her im¬
mortal soul on the chance that he would not take up
with the Wannop girl. And it would have been betting
on a certainty! . . . But she had had no idea what
their relations were to be, after the war. At first she
had thought that they had parted for good when she
had gone off from their flat at four o’clock in the
morning. It had seemed logical. But, gradually, in
retreat at Birkenhead, in the still, white, nun’s room,
doubt had come upon her. It was one of the disad¬
vantages of living as they did that they seldom spoke
their thoughts. But that was also at times an advan¬
tage. She had certainly meant their parting to be for
good. She had certainly raised her voice in giving
the name of her station to the taxi-man with the pretty
firm conviction that he would hear her; and she had

140

i 7^0 {MORE PARADES

been pretty well certain that he would take it as a
sign that the breath had gone out of their union. . . .
Pretty certain. But not quite! . . .

She would have died rather than write to him; she
would die, now, rather than give any inkling that she
wanted them to live under the same roof again. . . .
She said to herself:

“Is he writing to that girl?” And then: “No!

. . . I’m certain that he isn’t.” . . . She had had all
his letters stopped at the flat, except for a few cir¬
culars that she let dribble through to him, so that
he might imagine that all his correspondence was com¬
ing through. From the letters to him that she did read
she was pretty sure that he had given no other address
than the flat in Gray’s Inn. . . . But there had been
no letters from Valentine Wannop. . . . Two from
Mrs. Wannop, two from his brother Mark, one from
Port Scatho, one or two from brother officers and
some officials chits. . . . She said to herself that, if
there had been any letters from that girl, she would
have let all his letters go through, including the girl’s.
. . . Now she was not so certain that she would have.

In the glass she saw Christopher marching woodenly
out of the hotel, along the path that led from door to
door behind her. ... It came to her with extraordi¬
nary gladness — the absolute conviction that he was not
corresponding with Miss Wannop. The absolute con¬
viction. ... If he had come alive enough to do that he
would have looked different. She did not know how
he would have looked. But different . . . Alive!
Perhaps self-conscious: perhaps . . . satisfied . . .

For some time the major had been grumbling about
his wrongs. He said that he followed her about all
day, like a lap-dog, and got nothing for it. Now she

141

{MORE PARADES

wanted him to be conciliatory. She said she wanted
to have a man on show as escort. Well then, an escort
got something. ... At just this moment he was begin¬
ning again with:

“Look here . . . will you let me come to your room
to-night or will you not?”

She burst into high, loud laughter. He said:

“Damn it all, it isn’t any laughing matter! . . .
Look here! You don’t know what I risk. . . . There
are A.P.M.’s and P.M.’s and deputy sub-acting
A.P.M.’s walking about the corridors of all the hotels
in this town, all night long. . . . It’s as much as my
job is worth. . . .”

She put her handkerchief to her lips to hide a smile
that she knew would be too cruel for him not to notice.
And even when she took it away, he said:

“Hang it all, what a cruel-looking fiend you are!

. . . Why the devil do I hang around you? . . .
There’s a picture that my mother’s got, by Burne-Jones
... A cruel-looking woman with a distant smile . . .
Some vampire ... La belle Dame sans Merci . . .
That’s what you’re like.”

She looked at him suddenly with considerable seri¬
ousness. . . .

“See here, Potty . . .” she began. He groaned:

“I believe you’d like me to be sent to the beastly
trenches. ... Yet a big, distinguished-looking chap
like me wouldn’t have a chance. ... At the first
volley the Germans fired, they’d pick me off. . . .”

“Oh, Potty,” she exclaimed, “try to be serious for
a minute. ... I tell you I’m a woman who’s trying
. . . who’s desperately wanting ... to be reconciled
to her husband! ... I would not tell that to another
soul. ... I would not tell it to myself. . . . But one

142

(MORE PARADES

owes something ... a parting scene, if nothing else.
. . . Well, something ... to a man one’s been in bed
with. ... I didn’t give you a parting scene at . . .
ah, Yssingueux-les-Pervenches ... so I give you this
tip instead. . . .”

He said:

“Will you leave your bedroom door unlocked, or
won’t you?”

She said:

“If that man would throw his handkerchief to me,
I would follow him round the world in my shift! . . .
Look here . . . see me shake when I think of it. . . .”
She held out her hand at the end of her long arm:
hand and arm trembled together, minutely, then very
much. . . . “Well,” she finished, “if you see that and
still want to come to my room . . . your blood be on
your own head. . . .” She paused for a breath or
two and then said:

“You can come. ... I won’t lock my door. . . .
But I don’t say that you’ll get anything ... or that
you’ll like what you get. . . . That’s a fair tip. . . .”
She added suddenly: “You sale fat . . . take what
you get and be damned to you! ...”

Major Perowne had suddenly taken to twirling his
moustaches; he said:

“Oh, I’ll chance the A.P.M.’s. . . .”

She suddenly coiled her legs into her chair.

“I know now what I came here for,” she said.

Major Wilfrid Fosbrooke Eddicker Perowne of
Perowne, the son of his mother, was one of those indi¬
viduals who have no history, no strong proclivities,
nothing, his knowledge seemed to be bounded by the
contents of his newspaper for the immediate day; at

5^0 {MORE PARADES 143

any rate, his conversation never went any farther. He
was not bold, he was not shy: he was neither markedly
courageous nor markedly cowardly. His mother was
immoderately wealthy, owned an immense castle that
hung over crags, above a western sea, much as a bird¬
cage hangs from a window of a high tenement build¬
ing, but she received few or no visitors, her cuisine
being indifferent and her wine atrocious. She had
strong temperance opinions and, immediately after the
death of her husband, she had emptied the contents
of his cellar, which were almost as historic as his castle,
into the sea, a shudder going through county-family
and no, or almost no, characteristics. He had done
England. But even this was not enough to make
Perowne himself notorious.

His mother allowed him — after an eyeopener in
sarly youth — the income of a junior royalty, but he
did nothing with it. He lived in a great house in
Palace Gardens, Kensington, and he lived all alone
with rather a large staff of servants who had been
selected by his mother, but they did nothing at all,
for he ate all his meals, and even took his bath and
dressed for dinner at the Bath Club. He was other¬
wise parsimonious.

He had, after the fashion of his day, passed a year
or two in the army when young. He had been first
gazetted to His Majesty’s Forty-second Regiment,
but on the Black Watch proceeding to India he had
exchanged into the Glamorganshires, at that time
commanded by General Campion and recruiting in and
around Lincolnshire. The general had been an old
friend of Perowne’s mother, and, on being promoted
to brigadier, had taken Perowne on to his staff as his
galloper, for, although Perowne rode rather indiffer-

144 5^0 iMORE PARADES

ently, he had a certain social knowledge and could be
counted on to know how correctly to address a regi¬
mental invitation to a dowager countess who had
married a viscount’s third son. ... As a military
figure otherwise he had a very indifferent word of com¬
mand, a very poor drill and next to no control of his
men, but he was popular with his batmen, and in a
rather stiff way was presentable in the old scarlet uni¬
form or the blue mess jacket. He was exactly six
foot, to a hairbreadth, in his stockings, had very dark
eyes, and a rather grating voice; the fact that his
limbs were a shade too bulky for his trunk, which was
not at all corpulent, made him appear a little clumsy.
If in a club you asked what sort of a fellow he was
your interlocutor would tell you, most probably, that
he had or was supposed to have warts on his head, this
to account for his hair which all his life he had combed
back, unparted from his forehead. But as a matter
of fact he had no warts on his head.

He had once started out on an expedition to shoot
big game in Portuguese East Africa. But on its
arrival his expedition was met with the news that the
natives of the interior were in revolt, so Perowne had
returned to Kensington Palace Gardens. He had had
several mild successes with women, but, owing to his
habits of economy and fear of imbroglios, until the age
of thirty-four, he had limited the field of his amours
to young women of the lower social orders. . . .

His affair with Sylvia Tietjens might have been
something to boast about, but he was not boastful,
and indeed he had been too hard hit when she had
left him even to bear to account lyingly for the em¬
ployment of the time he had spent with her in
Brittany. Fortunately no one took sufficient interest

ZM0RE PARADES 145

in his movements to wait for his answer to their in¬
different questions as to where he had spent the
summer. When his mind reverted to her desertion
of him moisture would come out of his eyes, undemon¬
stratively, as water leaves the surface of a sponge. . . .

Sylvia had left him by the simple expedient of step¬
ping without so much as a reticule on to the little
French tramway that took you to the main railway
line. From there she had written to him in pencil on
a closed correspondence card that she had left him
because she simply could not bear either his dullness
or his craking voice. She said they would probably
run up against each other in the course of the autumn
season in town and, after purchase of some night
things, had made straight for the German spa to which
her mother had retreated.

At the later date Sylvia had no difficulty in account¬
ing to herself for her having gone off with such an
oaf: she had simply reacted in a violent fit of sexual
hatred, from her husband’s mind. And she could not
have found a mind more utterly dissimilar than
Perowne’s in any decently groomed man to be found
in London. She could recall, even in the French hotel
lounge, years after, the almost painful emotion of joy¬
ful hatred that had visited her when she had first
thought of going off with him. It was the self-applause
of one who has just hit upon an excruciatingly inspiring
intellectual discovery. In her previous transitory
infidelities to Christopher she had discovered that,
however presentable the man with whom she might
have been having an affair, and however short the
affair, even if it were only a matter of a week-end . . .
Christopher had spoilt her for the other man. It was
the most damnable of his qualities that to hear any

146 [MORE PARADES

other man talk of any subject— any, any subject—
from stable form to the balance of power, or from the
voice of a given opera singer to the recurrence of a
comet — to have to pass a week-end with any other
man and hear his talk after having spent the inside of
the week with Christopher, hate his ideas how you
might, was the difference between listening to a grown
man and, with an intense boredom, trying to entertain
an inarticulate schoolboy. As beside him, other men
simply did not seem ever to have grown up. . .

Just before, with an extreme suddenness, consent¬
ing to go away with Perowne, the illuminating idea had
struck her: If I did go away with him it would be the
most humiliating thing I could do to Christopher. . . .
And just when the idea had struck her, beside her chair
in the conservatory at a dance given by the general’s
sister, Lady Claudine Sandbach, Perowne, his voice
rendered more throaty and less disagreeable than usual
by emotion, had been going on and on begging her to
elope with him. . . . She had suddenly said:

“Very well . . . let’s. . . .”

His emotion had been so unbridled in its astonish¬
ment that she had, even at that, almost been inclined
to treat her own speech as a joke and to give up the
revenge. . . . But the idea of the humiliation that
Christopher must feel proved too much for her. For,
for your wife to throw you over for an attractive man
is naturally humiliating, but that she should leave you
publicly for a man of hardly any intelligence at all,
you priding yourself on your brains, must be nearly as
mortifying a thing as can happen to you.

But she had hardly set out upon her escapade be¬
fore two very serious defects in her plan occurred to
her with extreme force: the one that, however humili-

147

£MORE PARADES

ated Christopher might feel she would not be with him
to witness his humiliation; the other that, oaf as she
had taken Perowne to be in casual society, in close
daily relationship he was such an oaf as to be almost
insufferable. She had imagined that he would prove
a person out of whom it might be possible to make
something by a judicious course of alternated mother¬
ing and scorn: she discovered that his mother had
already done for him almost all that woman could do.
For, when he had been an already rather backward
boy at a private school, his mother had kept him so
extremely short of pocket-money that he had robbed
other boys’ desks of a few shillings here and there —
in order to subscribe towards a birthday present for
the head master’s wife. His mother, to give him a salu¬
tary lesson, had given so much publicity to the affair
that he had become afflicted with a permanent bent
towards shyness that rendered him by turns very mis¬
trustful of himself or very boastful and, although he
repressed manifestations of either tendency towards
the outside world, the continual repression rendered
him almost incapable of any vigorous thought or
action. . . .

That discovery did not soften Sylvia towards him:
it was, as she expressed it, his funeral and, although
she would have been ready for any normal job of
smartening up a roughish man, she was by no means
prepared to readjust other women’s hopeless maternal
misfits.

So she had got no farther than Ostend, where they
had proposed to spend a week or so at the tables, be¬
fore she found herself explaining to some acquaint¬
ances whom she met that she was in that gay city
merely for an hour or two, between trains, on the way

148 &c O O40RE PARADES

to join her mother in a German health resort. The
impulse to say that had come upon her by surprise,
for, until that moment, being completely indifferent to
criticism, she had intended to cast no veil at all over
her proceedings. But, quite suddenly, on seeing some
well-known English faces in the casino it had come
over her to think that, however much she imagined
Christopher to be humiliated by her going off with an
oaf like Perowne, that humiliation must be as nothing
compared with that which she might be expected to
feel at having found no one better than an oaf like
Perowne to go off with. Moreover . . . she began to
miss Christopher.

These feelings did not grow any less intense in the
rather stuffy but inconspicuous hotel in the Rue St.
Roque in Paris to which she immediately transported
the bewildered but uncomplaining Perowne, who had
imagined that he was to be taken to Wiesbaden for a
course of light gaieties. And Paris, when you avoid
the more conspicuous resorts, and when you are un¬
provided with congenial companionship can prove
nearly as overwhelming as is, say, Birmingham on a
Sunday.

So that Sylvia waited for only just long enough to
convince herself that her husband had no apparent
intention of applying for an immediate divorce and
had, indeed, no apparent intention of doing anything
at all. She sent him, that is to say, a postcard saying
that letters and other communications would reach her
at her inconspicuous hotel— and it mortified her not a
little to have to reveal the fact that her hotel was so
inconspicuous. But, except that her own correspond¬
ence was forwarded to her with regularity, no com¬
munications at all came from Tietjens.

CO Of ORE PARADES 149

In an air-resort in the centre of France to which
she next removed Perowne, she found herself con¬
sidering rather seriously what it might be expected
that Tietjens would do. Through indirect and unsus¬
pecting allusions in letters from her personal friends
she found that if Tietjens did not put up, he certainly
did not deny, the story that she had gone to nurse or
be with her mother, who was supposed to be seriously
ill. . . . That is to say, her friends said how rotten
it was that her mother, Mrs. Satterthwaite, should be
so seriously ill; how rotten it must be for her to be shut
up in a potty little German kur-ort when the world
could be so otherwise amusing: and how well Chris¬
topher whom they saw from time to time seemed to
be getting on considering how rotten it must be for
him to be left all alone. . . .

At about this time Perowne began to become, if
possible, more irritating than ever. In their air-resort,
although the guests were almost entirely French, there
was a newly opened golf-course, and at the game of
golf Perowne displayed an inefficiency and at the same
time a morbid conceit that were surprising in one
naturally lymphatic. He would sulk for a whole eve¬
ning if either Sylvia or any Frenchman beat him in a
round, and, though Sylvia was by then completely
indifferent to his sulking, what was very much worse
was that he became gloomily and loud-voicedly quar¬
relsome over his games with foreign opponents.

Three events, falling within ten minutes of each
other, made her determined to get as far away from
that air-resort as was feasible. In the first place she
observed at the end of the street some English people
called Thurston, whose faces she faintly knew, and
the emotion she suddenly felt let her know how ex-

150 &£0 {MORE PARADES

tremely anxious she was that she should let it remain
feasible for Tietjens to take her back. Then, in the
golf club-house, to which she found herself fiercely
hurrying in order to pay her bill and get her clubs,
she overheard the conversation of two players that
left no doubt in her mind that Perowne had been de¬
tected in little meannesses of moving his ball at golf
or juggling with his score. . . . This was almost more
than she could stand. And, at the same moment, her
mind, as it were, condescended to let her remember
Christopher’s voice as it had once uttered the haughty
opinion that no man one could speak to would ever
think of divorcing any woman. If he could not defend
the sanctity of his hearth he must lump it unless the
woman wanted to divorce him. . . .

At the time when he had said it her mind — she had
been just then hating him a good deal — had seemed
to take no notice of the utterance. But now that it pre¬
sented itself forcibly to her again it brought with it
the thought: Supposing he wasn’t really only talking
through his hat !

. . . She dragged the wretched Perowne off his bed
where he had been lost in an after-lunch slumber and
told him that they must both leave that place at once,
and. that as soon as they reached Paris or some larger
town where he could find waiters and people to under¬
stand his French, she herself was going to leave him
for good. They did not, in consequence, get away
from the air-resort until the six o’clock train next
morning. Perowne’s passion of rage and despair at
the news that she wished to leave him took an
inconvenient form, for instead of announcing any
intention of committing suicide, as might have been
expected, he became gloomily and fantastically mur-

151

C^O ZMORE PARADES

derous. He said that unless Sylvia swore on a little
relic of St. Anthony she carried that she had no inten¬
tion of leaving him he would incontinently kill her.
He said, as he said for the rest of his days, that she
had ruined his life and caused great moral deteriora¬
tion in himself. But for her he might have married
some pure young thing. Moreover, influencing him
against his mother’s doctrines, she had forced him to
drink wine, by an effect of pure scorn. Thus he had
done harm, he was convinced, both to his health and to
his manly proportions. ... It was indeed for Sylvia
one of the most unbearable things about this man —
the way he took wine. With every glass he put to his
lips he would exclaim with an unbearable titter some
such imbecility as: Here is another nail in my coffin.
And he had taken to wine, and even to stronger liquor,
very well.

Sylvia had refused to swear by St. Anthony. She
definitely was not going to introduce the saint into
her amorous affairs, and she definitely was not going
to take on any relic an oath that she meant to break
at an early opportunity. There was such a thing as
playing it too low down : there are dishonours to which
death is preferable. So, getting hold of his revolver
at a time when he was wringing his hands, she dropped
it into the water-jug and then felt reasonably safe.

Perowne knew no French and next to nothing about
France, but he had discovered that the French did
nothing to you for killing a woman who intended to
leave you. Sylvia, on the other hand, was pretty cer¬
tain that, without a weapon, he could not do much to
her. If she had had no other training at her very ex¬
pensive school she had had so much drilling in calis¬
thenics as to be singularly mistress of her limbs, and,

152 [MORE PARADES

in the interests of her beauty she had always kept her¬
self very fit. . . .

She said at last:

“Very well. We will go to Yssingueux-les-Per-
venches. . . .”

A rather pleasant French couple in the hotel had
spoken of this little place in the extreme west of
France as a lonely paradise, they having spent their
honeymoon there. . . . And Sylvia wanted a lonely
paradise if there was going to be any scrapping before
she got away from Perowne. . . .

She had no hesitation as to what she was going to
do: the long journey across half France by miserable
trains had caused her an agony of home-sickness!
Nothing less! ... It was a humiliating disease from
which to suffer. But it was unavoidable, like mumps.
You had to put up with it. Besides, she even found
herself wanting to see her child, whom she imagined
herself to hate, as having been the cause of all her
misfortunes. . . .

She therefore prepared, after great thought, a letter
telling Tietjens that she intended to return to him.
She made the letter as nearly as possible like one she
would write announcing her return from a country
house to which she should have been invited for an
indefinite period, and she added some rather hard in¬
structions about her maid, these being intended to
remove from the letter any possible trace of emotion.
She was certain that, if she showed any emotion at all,
Christopher would never take her under his roof again.
. . . She was pretty certain that no gossip had been
caused by her escapade. Major Thurston had been at
the railway station when they had left, but they had
not spoken — and Thurston was a very decentish,

<^0 £M0RE PARADES 153

brown-moustached fellow, of the sort that does not
gossip.

It had proved a little difficult to get away, for
Perowne during several weeks watched her like an
attendant in a lunatic asylum. But at last the idea
presented itself to him that she would never go without
her frocks, and, one day, in a fit of intense somnolence
after a lunch, washed down with rather a large quan¬
tity of the local and fiery cordial, he let her take a
walk alone. . . .

She was by that time tired of men ... or she
imagined that she was; for she was not prepared to
be certain, considering the muckers she saw women
coming all round her over the most unpresentable indi¬
viduals. Men, at any rate, never fulfilled expectations.
They might, upon acquaintance, turn out more enter¬
taining than they appeared; but almost always taking
up with a man was like reading a book you had read
when you had forgotten that you had read it. You
had not been for ten minutes in any sort of intimacy
with any man before you said: “But I’ve read all this
before. . . .” You knew the opening, you were already
bored by the middle, and, especially, you knew the
end. . . .

She remembered, years ago, trying to shock her
mother’s spiritual adviser, Father Consett, whom they
had lately murdered in Ireland, along with Casement.

. . . The poor saint had not in the least been shocked.
He had gone her one better. For when she had said
something like that her idea of a divvy life — they used
in those days to say divvy — would be to go off with a
different man every week-end, he had told her that
after a short time she would be bored already by the

154 !K0 £MORE PARADES

time the poor dear fellow was buying the railway
tickets. . . .

And, by heavens, he had been right. . . . For when
she came to think of it, from the day that poor saint
had said that thing in her mother’s sitting-room in the
little German spa — Lobscheid, it must have been called
—in the candle-light, his shadow denouncing her from
all over the walls, to now when she sat in the palmish
wickerwork of that hotel that had been new-whitely
decorated to celebrate hostilities, never once had she
sat in a train with a man who had any right to look
upon himself as justified in mauling her about. . . .
She wondered if, from where he sat in heaven, Father
Consett would be satisfied with her as he looked down
into that lounge. . . . Perhaps it was really he that
had pulled off that change in her. . . .

Never once till yesterday. ... For perhaps the un¬
fortunate Perowne might just faintly have had the
right yesterday to make himself for about two minutes
— before she froze him into a choking, pallid snowman
with goggle eyes — the perfectly loathsome thing that
a man in a railway train becomes. . . . Much too bold
and yet stupidly awkward with the fear of the guard
looking in at the window, the train doing over sixty,
without corridors. . . . No, never again for me, father,
she addressed her voice towards the ceiling. . . .

Why in the world couldn’t you get a man to go away
with you and be just — oh, light comedy — for a whole,
a whole blessed week-end. For a whole blessed
life. . . Why not? . . . Think of it. ... A whole
blessed life with a man who was a good sort and yet
didn’t go all gurgly in the voice, and cod-fish-eyed and
all-overish — to the extent of not being able to find the
tickets when asked for them. . . . Father, dear, she

^CO [MORE PARADES 155

said again upwards, if I could find men like that, that
would be just heaven . . . where there is no marry¬
ing. . . . But, of course, she went on almost resign¬
edly, he would not be faithful to you. . . . And then:
one would have to stand it. . . .

She sat up so suddenly in her chair that beside her,
too, Major Perowne nearly jumped out of his wicker¬
work, and asked if he had come back. . . . She ex¬
plained:

“No, I’d be damned if I would. ... I’d be damned,
I’d be damned, I’d be damned if I would. . . . Never.
Never. By the living God! ”

She asked fiercely of the agitated major:

“Has Christopher got a girl in this town? . . .
You’d better tell me the truth!”

The major mumbled:

“He . . . No. . . . He’s too much of a stick. . . .
He never even goes to Suzette’s. . . . Except once to
fetch out some miserable little squit of a subaltern who
was smashing up Mother Hardelot’s furniture. . .

He grumbled:

“But you shouldn’t give a man the jumps like that!

. . . Be conciliatory, you said. . . He went on to
grumble that her manners had not improved since she
had been at Yssingueux-les-Pervenches, . . . and then
went on to tell her that in French the words yeux des
pervenches meant eyes of periwinkle blue. And that
was the only French he knew, because a Frenchman
he had met in the train had told him so and he had
always thought that if her eyes had been periwinkle
blue . . . “But you’re not listening. . . . Hardly
polite, I call it,” he had mumbled to a conclusion. . . .

She was sitting forward in her chair still clenching
her hand under her chin at the thought that perhaps

156 [MORE PARADES

Christopher had Valentine Wannop in that town. That
was perhaps why he elected to remain there. She
asked:

“Why does Christopher stay on in this God-forsaken
hole? . . . The inglorious base, they call it. . . .”

“Because he’s jolly well got to. . . .” Major
Perowne said. “He’s got to do what he’s told. . . .”

She said: “Christopher! . . . You mean to say
they’d keep a man like Christopher anywhere he
didn’t want to be . . .”

“They’d jolly w7ell knock spots off him if he went
away,” Major Perowne exclaimed. . . . “What the
deuce do you think your blessed fellow is? . . . The
King of England? . . .” He added with a sudden
sombre ferocity: “They’d shoot him like anybody
else if he bolted. . . . What do you think?”

She said: “But all that wouldn’t prevent his having
a girl in this town?”

“Well, he hasn’t got one,” Perowne said. “He sticks
up in that blessed old camp of his like a blessed she-
chicken sitting on addled eggs. . . . That’s what they
say of him. ... I don’t know anything about the
fellow. . . .”

Listening vindictively and indolently, she thought
she caught in his droning tones a touch of the homi¬
cidal lunacy that had used to underlie his voice in the
bedroom at Yssingueux. The fellow had undoubtedly
about him a touch of the dull, mad murderer of the
police-courts. With a sudden animation she thought:

“Suppose he tried to murder Christopher. . . .”
And she imagined her husband breaking the fellow’s
back across his knee, the idea going across her mind
as fire traverses the opal. Then, with a dry throat, she
said to herself:

&C O MORE PARADES 157

“I’ve got to find out whether he has that girl in
Rouen. . . .” Men stuck together. The fellow Per-
owne might well be protecting Tietjens. It would be
unthinkable that any rules of the service could keep
Christopher in that place. They could not shut up
the upper classes. If Perowne had any sense he would
know that to shield Tietjens was the way not to get
her. . . . But he had no sense. . . . Besides, sexual
solidarity was a terribly strong thing. . . . She knew
that she herself would not give a woman’s secrets away
in order to get her man. Then . . . how was she to
ascertain whether the girl was not in that town? How?
. . . She imagined Tietjens going home every night to
her. . . . But he was going to spend that night with
herself. . . . She knew that. . . . Under that roof.
. . . Fresh from the other. . . .

She imagined him there, now. ... In the parlour
of one of the little villas you see from the tram on the
top of the town. . . . They were undoubtedly, now,
discussing her. . . . Her whole body writhed, muscle
on muscle, in her chair. . . . She must discover. . . .
But how do you discover? Against a universal con¬
spiracy. . . . This whole war was an agapemone. . . .
You went to war when you desired to rape innumerable
women. ... It was what war was for. . . . All these
men, crowded in this narrow space. . . . She stood up:

“I’m going,” she said, “to put on a little powder for
Lady Sachse’s feast. . . . You needn’t stay if you
don’t want to. . . .” She was going to watch every
face she saw until it gave up the secret of where in
that town Christopher had the Wannop girl hidden.
. . . She imagined her freckled, snubnosed face
pressed — squashed was the word — against his cheek.
. . . She was going to investigate. . . .

CHAPTER II

She found an early opportunity to carry on her in¬
vestigations. For, at dinner that night, she found
herself, Tietjens having gone to the telephone with a
lance-corporal, opposite what she took to be a small
tradesman, with fresh-coloured cheeks, and a great,
grey, forward-sprouting moustache, in a uniform so
creased that the creases resembled the veins of a leaf.

. . . A very trustworthy small tradesman: the grocer
from round the corner whom, sometimes, you allow to
supply you with paraffin. ... He was saying to her:

“If, ma’am, you multiply two-thousand nine hun¬
dred and something by ten you arrive at twenty-nine
thousand odd. . . .”

And she had exclaimed:

“You really mean that my husband, Captain Tiet¬
jens, spent yesterday afternoon in examining twenty-
nine thousand toe-nails. . . . And two thousand nine
hundred toothbrushes. . . .”

“I told him,” her interlocutor answered with deep
seriousness, “that these being Colonial troops it was
not so necessary to examine their toothbrushes. . . .
Imperial troops will use the brush they clean their
buttons with for their teeth so as to have a clean tooth¬
brush to show the medical officer. . . .”

“It sounds,” she said with a little shudder, “as if
you were all schoolboys playing a game. . . . And
you say my husband really occupies his mind with such
things. . . .”

Second-Lieutenant Cowley, dreadfully conscious

158

{MORE PARADES 159

that the shoulder-strap of his Sam Browne belt, pur¬
chased that afternoon at the Ordnance, and therefore
brand-new, did not match the abdominal part of the
belt that he had had for nearly ten years — a splendid
bit of leather, that! — answered nevertheless stoutly:

“Madam! If the brains of an army aren’t, the life
of an army is . . . in its feet. . . . And nowadays,
the medical officers say, in its teeth. . . . Your hus¬
band, ma’am, is an admirable officer. ... He says
that no draft he turns out shall. . . .”

She said:

“He spent three hours in ... You say, foot and kit
inspection. . . .”

Second-Lieutenant Cowley said:

“Of course he had other officers to help him with
the kit . . . but he looked at every foot himself. . . .”

She said:

“That took him from two till five. . . . Then he
had tea, I suppose. . . . And went to . . . What is
it? . . . The papers of the draft. . . .”

Second-Lieutenant Cowley said, muffledly through
his moustache:

“If the captain is a little remiss in writing letters
. . . I have heard. . . . You might, madam . . . I’m
a married man myself . . . with a daughter. . . .
And the army is not very good at writing letters. . . .
You might say, in that respect, that thank God we
have got a navy, ma’am. . . .”

She let him stagger on for a sentence or two, imag¬
ining that, in his confusion, she might come upon traces
of Miss Wannop in Rouen. Then she said hand¬
somely:

“Of course you have explained everything, Mr.
Cowley, and I am very much obliged. ... Of course

160 WO DA ORE PARADES

my husband would not have time to write very full
letters. ... He is not like the giddy young subalterns
who run after . . .”

He exclaimed in a great roar of laughter:

“The captain run after skirts. . . . Why, I can
number on my hands the times he’s been out of my
sight since he’s had the battalion!”

A deep wave of depression went over Sylvia.

“Why,” Lieutenant Cowley laughed on, “if we had
a laugh against him it was that he mothered the lot
of us as if he was a hen sitting on addled eggs. . . .
For it’s only a rag-time army, as the saying is, when
you’ve said the best for it that you can. . . . And look
at the other commanding officers we’ve had before we
had him. . . . There was Major Brooks. . . . Never
up before noon, if then, and out of camp by two-thirty.
Get your returns ready for signing before then or never
get ’em signed. . . . And Colonel Potter . . . Bless
my soul . . . ’e wouldn’t sign any blessed papers at
all. . . . He lived down here in this hotel, and we
never saw him up at the camp at all. . . . But the
captain. . . . We always say that . . if ’e was a

Chelsea adjutant getting off a draft of the Second
Coldstreams. . . .”

With her indolent and gracious beauty— Sylvia knew
that she was displaying indolent and gracious beauty
— Sylvia leaned over the tablecloth listening for items
in the terrible indictment that, presently, she was going
to bring against Tietjens. . . . For the morality of
these matters is this: ... If you have an incompar¬
ably beautiful woman on your hands you must occupy
yourself solely with her. . . . Nature exacts that of
you . . . until you are unfaithful to her with a snub¬
nosed girl with freckles: that, of course, being a reac-

161

3^0 3M0RE PARADES

tion, is still in a way occupying yourself with your
woman! . . . But to betray her with a battalion. . . .
That is against decency, against Nature. . . . And
for him, Christopher Tietjens, to come down to the
level of the men you met here! . . .

Tietjens, mooning down the room between tables,
had more than his usually aloof air since he had just
come out of a telephone box. He slipped, a weary
mass, into the polished chair between her and the lieu¬
tenant. He said:

“I’ve got the washing arranged for . . .” and Sylvia
gave to herself a little hiss between the teeth, of vin¬
dictive pleasure! This was indeed betrayal to a
battalion. He added: “I shall have to be up in camp
before four-thirty to-morrow morning. . . .

Sylvia could not resist saying:

“Isn’t there a poem ... Ah me, the damn, the
dawn, it comes too soon! . . . said of course by lovers
in bed? . . . Who was the poet?”

Cowley went visibly red to the roots of his hair and
evidently beyond. Tietjens finished his speech to
Cowley, who had remonstrated against his going up
to the camp so early by saying that he had not been
able to get hold of an officer to march the draft. He
then said in his leisurely way:

“There were a great many poems with that refrain
in the Middle Ages. . . . You are probably thinking
of an albade by Arnaut Daniel, which someone trans¬
lated lately. ... An albade was a song to be sung at
dawn when, presumably, no one but lovers would be
likely to sing. . . .”

“Will there,” Sylvia asked, “be anyone but you sing¬
ing up in your camp to-morrow at four?”

She could not help it. . . . She knew that Tietjens

162 WO mo RE PARADES

had adopted his slow pomposity in order to give the
grotesque object at the table with them time to recover
from his confusion. She hated him for it. What right
had he to make himself appear a pompous ass in order
to shield the confusion of anybody?

The second-lieutenant came out of his confusion to
exclaim, actually slapping his thigh:

“There you are, madam. . . . Trust the captain to
know everything! ... I don’t believe there’s a ques¬
tion under the sun you could ask him that he couldn’t
answer. . . . They say up at the camp . . .” He went
on with long stories of all the questions Tietjens had
answered up at the camp. . . .

Emotion was going all over Sylvia ... at the
proximity of Tietjens. She said to herself: “Is this
to go on for ever?” Her hands were ice-cold. She
touched the back of her left hand with the fingers of
her right. It was ice-cold. She looked at her hands.
They were bloodless. . . . She said to herself: “It’s
pure sexual passion . . . it’s pure sexual passion . . .
God! Can’t I get over this?” She said: “Father!

. . . You used to be fond of Christopher. . . . Get
our Lady to get me over this. . . . It’s the ruin of him
and the ruin of me. But, oh damn, don’t! ... For
it’s all I have to live for. . . .” She said: “When he
came mooning back from the telephone I thought it
was all right. ... I thought what a heavy wooden-
horse he looked. ... For two minutes. . . . Then it’s
all over me again. ... I want to swallow my saliva
and I can’t. My throat won’t work. . . .”

She leaned one of her white bare arms on the table¬
cloth towards the walrus-moustache that was still
snuffling gloriously:

“They used to call him Old Sol at school,” she said.

163

{MORE PARADES

“But there’s one question of Solomon’s he could not
answer. . . . The one about the way of a man with
. . . Oh, a maid! . . . Ask him what happened be¬
fore the dawn ninety-six — no, ninety-eight days
ago. . .

She said to herself: “I can’t help it. . . . Oh, I can’t
help it. . .

The ex-sergeant-major was exclaiming happily:

“Oh, no one ever said the captain was one of these
thought-readers. . . . It’s real solid knowledge of
men and things he has. . . . Wonderful how he knows
the men considering he was not born in the service.
. . . But there, your born gentleman mixes with men
all his days and knows them. Down to the ground
and inside their puttees. . .

Tietjens was looking straight in front of him, his face
perfectly expressionless.

“But I bet I got him, . . she said to herself and
then to the sergeant-major:

“I suppose now an army officer — one of your born
gentlemen — when a back-from-leave train goes out
from any of the great stations — Paddington, say — to
the front. . . . He knows how all the men are feeling.
. . . But not what the married women think ... or
the . . . the girl. . . .”

She said to herself: “Damn it, how clumsy I am
getting! ... I used to be able to take his hide off
with a word. Now I take sentences at a time. . . .”

She went on with her uninterrupted sentence to
Cowley:

“Of course he may never be going to see his only
son again, so it makes him sensitive. . . . The officer
at Paddington, I mean. . . .”

She said to herself: “By God, if that beast does not

164

^ O MORE PARADES

give in to me to-night he never shall see Michael
again. . . . Ah, but I got him. . . Tietjens had his
eyes closed, round each of his high-coloured nostrils
a crescent of whiteness was beginning. And increas¬
ing. . . . She felt a sudden alarm and held the edge
of the table with her extended arm to steady herself.
. . . Men went white at the nose like that when they
were going to faint. . . . She did not want him to
faint. . . . But he had noticed the word Paddington.
. . . Ninety-eight days before. . . . She had counted
every day since. . . . She had got that much informa¬
tion. . . . She had said Paddington outside the house
at dawn and he had taken it as a farewell. He had
... He had imagined himself free to do what he liked
with the girl. . . . Well, he wasn’t. . . . That was
why he was white about the gills. . . .

Cowley exclaimed loudly:

“Paddington! ... It isn’t from there that back-
from-leave trains go. Not for the front: the B.E.F.
. . . Not from Paddington. . . . The Glamorgan*
shires go from there to the depot. . . . And the Liver-
pools. . . . They’ve got a depot at Birkenhead. . . .
Or is that the Cheshires? . . .” He asked of Tietjens:
“Is it the Liverpools or the Cheshires that have a depot
at Birkenhead, sir? . . . You remember we recruited
a draft from there when we were at Penhally. ... At
any rate, you go to Birkenhead from Paddington. . . .
I was never there myself. . . . They say it’s a nice
place. . . .”

Sylvia said — she did not want to say it:

“It’s quite a nice place ... but I should not think
of staying there for ever. . . .”

Tietjens said:

“The Cheshires have a training camp — not a depot

165

Z\CO mORE PARADES

—near Birkenhead. And of course there are R.G.A.’s
there. . . .” She had been looking away from him.
. . . Cowley exclaimed:

“You were nearly off, sir,” hilariously. “You had
your peepers shut. . . .” Lifting a champagne glass,
he inclined himself towards her. “You must excuse
the captain, ma’am,” he said. “He had no sleep last
night. . . . Largely owing to my fault. . . . Which

is what makes it so kind of him. ... I tell you,

ma’am, there are few things I would not do for the
captain. . . .” He drank his champagne and began an
explanation: “You may not know, ma’am, this is a
great day for me. . . . And you and the captain are
making it the greatest day of my life. . . .” Why,
at four this morning there hadn’t been a wretcheder

man in Ruin town. . . . And now ... He must tell

her that he suffered from an unfortunate — a miserable
— complaint. . . . One that makes one have to be
careful of celebrations. . . . And to-day was a day
that he had to celebrate. . . . But he dare not have
done it where Sergeant-Major Ledoux is along with a
lot of their old mates. ... “I dare not ... I
dussn’t!” he finished. . . . “So I might have been
sitting, now, at this very moment, up in the cold camp.
. . . But for you and the captain. . . . Up in the
cold camp. . . . You’ll excuse me, ma’am. . . .”

Sylvia felt that her lids were suddenly wavering:

“I might have been myself,” she said, “in a cold
camp, too ... if I hadn’t thrown myself on the
captain’s mercy! ... At Birkenhead, you know.
... I happened to be there till three weeks ago. . . .
It’s strange that you mentioned it. . . . There are
things like signs . . . but you’re not a Catholic!
They could hardly be coincidences. . . .”

166

SV’O {MORE PARADES

She was trembling. . . . She looked, fumblingly
opening it, into the little mirror of her powder-box —
of chased, very thin gold with a small blue stone, like
a forget-me-not in the centre of the concentric engrav¬
ings. . . . Drake — the possible father of Michael —
had given it to her. . . . The first thing he had ever
given her. She had brought it down to-night out of
defiance. She imagined that Tietjens disliked it. . . .
She said breathlessly to herself: “Perhaps the damn
thing is an ill omen. . . Drake had been the first
man who had ever ... A hot-breathed brute! . . .
In the little glass her features were chalk-white. . . .
She looked like . . . she looked like . . . She had a
dress of golden tissue. . . . The breath was short be¬
tween her white set teeth. . . . Her face was as white
as her teeth. . . . And . . . Yes! Nearly! Her
lips. . . . What was her face like? ... In the
chapel of the convent of Birkenhead there was a tomb
all of alabaster. . . . She said to herself:

“He was near fainting. . . . I’m near fainting.
. . . What’s this beastly thing that’s between us?
= . . If I let myself faint. . . . But it would not
make that beast’s face any less wooden! . . .”

She leaned across the table and patted the ex-
sergeant-major’s black-haired hand:

“I’m sure,” she said, “you’re a very good man.
. . .” She did not try to keep the tears out of her
eyes, remembering his words: “Up in the cold camp.”
. . . “I’m glad the captain, as you call him, did not
leave you in the cold camp. . . . You’re devoted to
him, aren’t you? . . . There are others he does leave
. . . up in . . . the cold camp. ... For punishment,
you know. . . .”

3^0 3M0RE PARADES 167

The ex-sergeant-major, the tears in his eyes too,
said:

“Well, there is men you ’as to give the C.B. to.
. . . C.B. means confined to barracks. . .

“Oh, there are!” she exclaimed. “There are! . . .
And women, too. . . . Surely there are women, too?

• • •

The sergeant-major said:

“Wacks, per’aps. ... I don’t know. . . . They
say women’s discipline is much like ours. . . .
Founded on hours!”

She said:

“Do you know what they used to say of the captain?

. . .” She said to herself: “I pray to God the stiff,
fatuous beast likes sitting here listening to this stuff.
. . . Blessed Virgin, mother of God, make him take
me. . . . Before midnight. Before eleven. ... As
soon as we get rid of this ... No, he’s a decent little
man. . . . Blessed Virgin!” . . . “Do you know
what they used to say of the captain? ... I heard
the warmest banker in England say it of him. . . .”

The sergeant-major, his eyes enormously opened,
said:

“Did you know the warmest banker in England?
. . . But there, we always knew the captain was well
connected. . . .” She went on:

“They said of him. . . . He was always helping
people.” . . . “Holy Mary, mother of God! . . .
He’s my husband- . . . It’s not a sin. . . . Before
midnight. . . . Oh, give me a sign. ... Or before
. . . the termination of hostilities. ... If you give
me a sign I could wait.” . . . “He helped virtuous
Scotch students, and broken-down gentry. . . . And
women taken in adultery. . . . All of them. . . .

168 W 0 {MORE PARADES

Like . . . You know Who. . . . That is his model.
. . She said to herself: “Curse him! ... I hope

he likes it. . . . You’d think the only thing he thinks
about is the beastly duck he’s wolfing down.” . . . And
then aloud: “They used to say: ‘He saved others;
himself he could not save. . . .’ ”

The ex-sergeant-major looked at her gravely:

“Ma’am,” he said, “we couldn’t say exactly that
of the captain. . . . For I fancy it was said of our
Redeemer. . . . But we ’ave said that if ever there
was a poor bloke the captain could ’elp, ’elp ’im ’e
would. . . . Yet the unit was always getting ’ellish
strafe from headquarters. . . .”

Suddenly Sylvia began to laugh. ... As she began
to laugh she had remembered . . . The alabaster
image in the nun’s chapel at Birkenhead the vision of
which had just presented itself to her, had been the
recumbent tomb of an honourable Mrs. Tremayne-
Warlock. . . . She was said to have sinned in her
youth . . . And her husband had never forgiven her.
. . . That was what the nuns said. . . . She said
aloud:

“A sign. . . .” Then to herself: “Blessed Mary!

. . . You’ve given it me in the neck. . . . Yet you
could not name a father for your child, and I can
name two. . . . I’m going mad. . . . Both I and
he are going to go mad. . . .”

She thought of dashing an enormous patch of red
upon either cheek. Then she thought it would be
rather melodramatic. . . .

She made in the smoking-room, whilst she was wait¬
ing for both Tietjens and Cowley to come back from
the telephone, another pact. . . . This time with

C^o MORE PARADES 169

Father Consett in heaven! She was fairly sure that
Father Consett — and quite possibly other of the
heavenly powers — wanted Christopher not to be wor¬
ried, so that he could get on with the war — or because
he was a good sort of dullish man such as the heavenly
authorities are apt to like. . . . Something like that.
• • •

She was by that time fairly calm again. You can¬
not keep up fits of emotion by the hour: at any rate,
with her, the fits of emotion were periodical and un¬
expected, though her colder passion remained always
the same. . . . Thus, when Christopher had come
into Lady Sachse’s that afternoon, she had been per¬
fectly calm. He had mooned through a number of
officers, both French and English, in a great octagonal,
bluish salon where Lady Sachse gave her teas, and had
come to her side with just a nod — the merest inflexion
of the head! . . . Perowne had melted away some¬
where behind the disagreeable duchess. The general,
very splendid and white-headed and scarlet-tipped and
gilt, had also borne down upon her at that. ... At
the sight of Perowne with her he had been sniffing and
snorting whilst he talked to the young nobleman — a
dark fellow in blue with a new belt who seemed just
a shade too theatrical, he being chauffeur to a marshal
of France and first cousin and nearest relative, ex¬
cept for parents and grandparents, of the prospective
bride. . . .

The general had told her that he was running the
show pretty strong on purpose because he thought it
might do something to cement the Entente Cordiale.
But it did not seem to be doing it. The French — offi¬
cers, soldiers and women — kept pretty well all on the
one side of the room — the English on the other. The

170

^0 {MORE PARADES

French were as a rule more gloomy than men and
women are expected to be. A marquis of sorts — she
understood that these were all Bonapartist nobility —
having been introduced to her had distinguished him¬
self no more than by saying that, for his part, he
thought the duchess was right, and by saying that to
Perowne who, knowing no French, had choked exactly
as if his tongue had suddenly got too big for his
mouth. . . .

She had not heard what the duchess — a very dis¬
agreeable duchess who sat on a sofa and appeared
savagely careworn — had been saying, so that she had
inclined herself, in the courtly manner that at school
she had been taught to reserve for the French legitimist
nobility, but that she thought she might expend upon
a rather state function even for the Bonapartists, and
had replied that without the least doubt the duchess
had the right of the matter. . . . The marquis had
given her from dark eyes one long glance, and she
had returned it with a long cold glance that certainly
told him she was meat for his masters. It extinguished
him. . . .

Tietjens had staged his meeting with herself re¬
markably well. It was the sort of lymphatic thing he
could do, so that, for the fifth of a minute, she won¬
dered if he had any feelings or emotions at all. But
she knew that he had. . . . The general, at any rate,
bearing down upon them with satisfaction, had re¬
marked:

“Ah, I see you’ve seen each other before to-day.
. . . I thought perhaps you wouldn’t have found time
before, Tietjens. . . . Your draft must be a great
nuisance. . . .”

Tietjens said without expression:

MORE PARADES 171

“Yes, we have seen each other before. ... I made
time to call at Sylvia’s hotel, sir.”

It was at Tietjens’ terrifying expressionlessness, at
that completely being up to a situation, that the first
wave of emotion had come over her. . . . For, till
that very moment, she had been merely sardonically
making the constatation that there was not a single
presentable man in the room. . . . There was not
even one that you could call a gentleman ... for
you cannot size up the French . . . ever! . . . But,
suddenly, she was despairing! . . . How, she said to
herself, could she ever move, put emotion into, this
lump! It was like trying to move an immense
mattress filled with feathers. You pulled at one end,
but the whole mass sagged down and remained im¬
mobile until you seemed to have no strength at all.
. . . Until virtue went out from you. . . .

It was as if he had the evil eye: or some special pro¬
tector. He was so appallingly competent, so appal¬
lingly always in the centre of his own picture:

The general said, rather joyfully:

“Then you can spare a minute, Tietjens, to talk to
the duchess! About coal! ... For goodness’ sake,
man, save the situation! I’m worn out. . . .”

Sylvia bit the inside of her lower lip — she never bit
her lip itself! — to keep herself from exclaiming aloud.
It was just exactly what should not happen to Tietjens
at that juncture. . . . She heard the general explain¬
ing to her in his courtly manner, that the duchess was
holding up the whole ceremony because of the price
of coal. The general loved her desperately. Her,
Sylvia! In quite a proper manner for an elderly gen¬
eral. . . . But he would go to no small extremes in
her interests ! So would his sister !

172 5^0 {MORE PARADES

She looked hard at the room to get her senses into
•order again. She said:

“It’s like a Hogarth picture. . .

The undissolvable air of the eighteenth century that
the French contrive to retain in all their effects kept the
scene singularly together. On a sofa sat the duchess,
relatives leaning over her. She was a duchess with one
of those impossible names: Beauchain-Radigutz or
something like it. The bluish room was octagonal and
vaulted, up to a rosette in the centre of the ceiling.
English officers and V.A.D.’s of some evident presence
opened out to the left, French military and very black-
•clothed women of all ages, but all apparently widows,
opened out to the right, as if the duchess shone down
a sea at sunset. Beside her on the sofa you did not
.see Lady Sachse; leaning over her you did not see
the prospective bride. This stoutish, unpresentable,
•coldly venomous woman, in black clothes so shabby
that they might have been grey tweed, extinguished
other personalities as the sun conceals planets. A
fattish, brilliantined personality, in mufti, with a scar¬
let rosette, stood sideways to the duchess’s right, his
hands extended forward as if in an invitation to a
dance; an extremely squat lady, also apparently a
widow, extended, on the left of the duchess, both her
black-gloved hands, as if she too were giving an in¬
vitation to the dance. . . .

The general, with Sylvia beside him, stood glorious
in the centre of the clearing that led to the open door¬
way of a much smaller room. Through the doorway
you could see a table with a white damask cloth; a
silver-gilt inkpot, fretted, like a porcupine with pens,
a fat, flat leather case for the transportation of docu¬
ments and two notaires: one in black, fat, and bald-

5^0 {MORE PARADES 173

headed; one in blue uniform, with a shining monocle,
and a brown moustache that he continued to twirl.
• • •

Looking round that scene Sylvia’s humour calmed
her and she heard the general say:

“She’s supposed to walk on my arm to that table
and sign the settlement. . . . We’re supposed to be
the first to sign it together. . . . But she won’t. Be¬
cause of the price of coal. It appears that she has
hothouses in miles. And she thinks the English have
put up the price of coal as if . . . damn it you’d think
we did it just to keep her hothouse stoves out.”

The duchess had delivered, apparently, a vindictive,
cold, calm and uninterruptible oration on the wicked¬
ness of her country’s allies as people who should have
allowed France to be devastated, and the flower of her
youth slain in order that they might put up the price
of a comestible that was absolutely needed in her life.
There was no arguing with her. There was no British
soul there who both knew anything about economics
and spoke French. And there she sat, apparently im¬
movable. She did not refuse to sign the marriage con¬
tract. She just made no motion to go to it and, ap¬
parently, the resulting marriage would be illegal if
that document were brought to her ! . . .

The general said:

“Now, what the deuce will Christopher find to say
to her? He’ll find something because he could talk
the hind legs off anything. But what the deuce will it
be? . . .”

It almost broke Sylvia’s heart to see how exactly
Christopher did the right thing. He walked up that
path to the sun and made in front of the duchess a
little awkward nick with his head and shoulders that

174 5^0 mo RE PARADES

was rather more like a curtsy than a bow. It appeared
that he knew the duchess quite well ... as he knew
everybody in the world quite well. He smiled at her
and then became just suitably grave. Then he began
to speak an admirable, very old-fashioned French with
an atrocious English accent. Sylvia had no idea that
he knew a word of the language — that she herself
knew very well indeed. She said to herself that upon
her word it was like hearing Chateaubriand talk— if
Chateaubriand had been brought up in an English
hunting country. ... Of course Christopher would
cultivate an English accent: to show that he was an
English county gentleman. And he would speak cor¬
rectly — to show that an English Tory can do anything
in the world if he wants to. . . .

The British faces in the room looked blank: the
French faces turned electrically upon him. Sylvia
said:

“Who would have thought . . . ?” The duchess
jumped to her feet and took Christopher’s arm. She
sailed with him imperiously past the general and past
Sylvia. She was saying that that was just what she
would have expected of a milor Anglais . . . Avec un
spleen tel que vous I’avez!

Christopher, in short, had told the duchess that as
his family owned almost the largest stretch of hot¬
house coal-burning land in England and her family
the largest stretch of hothouses in the sister-country
of France, what could they do better than make an
alliance? He would instruct his brother’s manager to
see that the duchess was supplied for the duration of
hostilities and as long after as she pleased with all the
coal needed for her glass at the pit-head prices of the
Middlesbrough-Cleveland district as the prices were

&C0 {MORE PARADES 175

on the 3rd of August, nineteen fourteen. ... He re¬
peated: “The pit-head price . . . livrable au prix de
V houille-maigre dans V enceinte des puits de ma cam-
pagne.” . . . Much to the satisfaction of the duchess,,
who knew all about prices.

... A triumph for Christopher was at that moment
so exactly what Sylvia thought she did not want that
she decided to tell the general that Christopher was a
Socialist. That might well take him down a peg or
two in the general’s esteem ... for the general’s arm-
patting admiration for Tietjens, the man who did not
argue but acted over the price of coal, was as much
as she could bear. . . . But, thinking it over in the
smoking-room after dinner, by which time she was a
good deal more aware of what she did want, she
was not so certain that she had done what she wanted.
. . . Indeed, even in the octagonal room during the
economical festivities that followed the signatures, she
had been far from certain that she had not done almost
exactly what she did not want. . . .

It had begun with the general’s exclaiming to her:

“You know your man’s the most unaccountable fel¬
low. . . . He wears the damn-shabbiest uniform of
any officer I ever have to talk to. He’s said to be un-
holily hard up. ... I even heard he had a cheque
sent back to the club. . . . Then he goes and makes a
princely gift like that — just to get Levin out of ten
minutes’ awkwardness. ... I wish to goodness I
could understand the fellow. . . . He’s got a positive
genius for getting all sorts of things out of the most
beastly muddles. . . . Why he’s even been useful to
me. . . . And then he’s got a positive genius for get¬
ting into the most disgusting messes. . . . You’re too
young to have heard of Dreyfus. . . . But I always-

176 DCO £M0RE PARADES

say that Christopher is a regular Dreyfus. ... I
shouldn’t be astonished if he didn’t end by being drum¬
med out of the army . . . which heaven forfend!”

It had been then that Sylvia had said:

“Hasn’t it ever occurred to you that Christopher
was a Socialist?”

For the first time in her life Sylvia saw her hus¬
band’s godfather look grotesque. . . . His jaw
•dropped down, his white hair became disarrayed and
he dropped his pretty cap with all the gold oakleaves
and the scarlet. When he rose from picking it up his
thin old face was purple and distorted. She wished
she hadn’t said it: she wished she hadn’t said it. He
exclaimed :

“Christopher! ... A So . . He gasped as if
he could not pronounce the word. He said: “Damn
it all! . . . I’ve loved that boy. . . . He’s my only
•godson. . . . His father was my best friend. . . .
I’ve watched over him. ... I’d have married his
mother if she would have had me. . . . Damn it all,
'he’s down in my will as residuary legatee after a few
■.small things left to my sister and my collection of
horns to the regiment I commanded. . . .”

Sylvia — they were sitting on the sofa the duchess
had left — patted him on the forearm and said:

“But general . . . godfather. . . .”

“It explains everything,” he said with a mortification
that was painful. His white moustache drooped and
trembled. “And what makes it all the worse — he’s
never had the courage to tell me his opinions.” He
stopped, snorted and exclaimed: “By God, I will have
him drummed out of the service. ... By God, I will.
I can do that much. . . .”

W?0 {MORE PARADES 177

His grief so shut him in on himself that she could
say nothing to him. . . .

“You tell me he seduced the little Wannop girl. . . .
The last person in the world he should have seduced.
. . . Ain’t there millions of other women? . . . He
got you sold up, didn’t he? . . . Along with keeping a
girl in a tobacco-shop. ... By jove, I almost lent
him . . . offered to lend him money on that occasion.
. . . You can forgive a young man for going wrong
with women. . . . We all do. . . . We’ve all set up
girls in tobacco-shops in our time. . . . But, damn it
all, if the fellow’s a Socialist it puts a different com¬
plexion. ... I could forgive him even for the little
Wannop girl, if he wasn’t . . . But . . . Good God,
isn’t it just the thing that a dirty-minded Socialist
would do? . . . To seduce the daughter of his father’s
oldest friend, next to me. ... Or perhaps Wannop
was an older friend than me. . . .”

He had calmed himself a little— and he was not
such a fool. He looked at her now with a certain
keenness in his blue eyes that showed no sign of age.
He said:

“See here, Sylvia. . . . You aren’t on terms with
Christopher for all the good game you put up here this
afternoon. ... I shall have to go into this. It’s a
serious charge to bring against one of His Majesty’s
officers. . . . Women do say things against their hus¬
bands when they are not on good terms with them.
. . .” He went on to say that he did not say she
wasn’t justified. If Christopher had seduced the little
Wannop girl it was enough to make her wish to harm
him. He had always found her the soul of honour,
straight as a die, straight as she rode to hounds. And
if she wished to nag against her husband, even if in

178

£MORE PARADES

little things it wasn’t quite the truth, she was perhaps
within her rights as a woman. She had said, for in¬
stance, that Tietjens had taken two pair of her best
sheets. Well, his own sister, her friend, raised Cain
if he took anything out of the house they lived in.
She had made an atrocious row because he had taken
his own shaving-glass out of his own bedroom at
Mountsby. Women liked to have sets of things. Per¬
haps, she, Sylvia had sets of pairs of sheets. His sis¬
ter had linen sheets with the date of the battle of
Waterloo on them. . . . Naturally you would not
want a set spoiled. . . . But this was another matter.
He ended up very seriously:

“I have not got time to go into this now. ... I
ought not to be another minute away from my office.
These are very serious days. . . .” He broke off to
utter against the Prime Minister and the Cabinet at
home a series of violent imprecations. He went on:

“But this will have to be gone into. . . . It’s heart¬
breaking that my time should be taken up by matters
like this in my own family. . . . But these fellows aim
at sapping the heart of the army. . . . They say they
distribute thousands of pamphlets recommending the
rank and file to shoot their officers and go over to the
Germans. . . . Do you seriously mean that
Christopher belongs to an organization? What is it
you are going on? What evidence have you? . . .”

She said:

“Only that he is heir to one of the biggest fortunes
in England, for a commoner, and he refuses to touch
a penny. . . . His brother Mark tells me
Christopher could have . . . Oh, a fabulous sum a
year. ... But he has made over Groby to me. . . .”

3^0 {MORE PARADES 179

The general nodded his head as if he were ticking
off ideas.

“Of course, refusing property is a sign of being one
of these fellows. By Jove, I must go. . . . But as
for his not going to live at Groby: If he is setting up
house with Miss Wannop. . . . Well, he could not
flaunt her in the face of the county. . . . And, of
course, those sheets! ... As you put it it looked as
if he’d beggared himself with his dissipations. . . .
But of course, if he is refusing money from Mark, it’s
another matter. . . . Mark would make up a couple
of hundred dozen pairs of sheets without turning a
hair. ... Of course there are the extraordinary
things Christopher says. . . . I’ve often heard you
complain of the immoral way he looks at the serious
affairs of life. . . . You said he once talked of lethal-
chambering unfit children.”

He exclaimed:

“I must go. There’s Thurston looking at me. . . .
But what then is it that Christopher has said? . . .
Hang it all: what is at the bottom of that fellow’s
mind? . . .”

“He desires,” Sylvia said, and she had no idea when
she said it, “to model himself upon our Lord. . . .”

The general leant back in the sofa. He said almost
indulgently:

“Who’s that . . . our Lord?”

Sylvia said:

“Upon our Lord Jesus Christ. . . .”

He sprang to his feet as if she had stabbed him with
a hatpin.

“Our . . .” he exclaimed. “Good God! ... I al¬
ways knew he had a screw loose. . . . But . . .”
He said briskly: “Give all his goods to the poor!

180 c WORE PARADES

. . . But He wasn’t a . . . Not a Socialist! What
was it He said: Render under Caesar ... It
wouldn’t be necessary to drum Him out of the army
. . .” He said: “Good Lord! . . . Good Lord!

. . . Of course his poor dear mother was a little . . .
But, hang it! ... The Wannop girl! . . .” Ex¬
treme discomfort overcame him. . . . Tietjens was
half-way across from the inner room, coming towards
them.

He said:

“Major Thurston is looking for you, sir. Very
urgently. . . .” The general regarded him as if he
had been the unicorn of the royal arms, come alive.
He exclaimed:

“Major Thurston! . . . Yes! Y^s! . . .” and,
Tietjens saying to him:

“I wanted to ask you, sir ...” He pushed Tiet¬
jens away as if he dreaded an assault and went off with
short, agitated steps.

So sitting there, in the smoking-lounge of the hotel
which was cram-jam full of officers, and no doubt per¬
fectly respectable, but over-giggling women — the sort
of place and environment which she had certainly
never expected to be called upon to sit in; and waiting
for the return of Tietjens and the ex-sergeant-major
— who again was certainly not the sort of person that
she had ever expected to be asked to wait for, though
for long years she had put up with Tietjens’ protege,
the odious Sir Vincent Macmaster, at all sorts of meals
and all sorts of places . . . but of course that was
only Christopher’s rights ... to have in his own
house, which, in the circumstances, wasn’t morally
hers, any snuffling, nervous, walrus-moustached or

181

{MORE PARADES

orientally obsequious protege that he chose to patron¬
ize. . . . And she quite believed that Tietjens, when
he had invited the sergeant-major to celebrate his com¬
mission with himself at dinner, hadn’t expected to dine
with her. ... It was the sort of obtuseness of which
he was disconcertingly capable, though at other times
he was much more disconcertingly capable of reading
your thoughts to the last hairsbreadth. . . . And, as
a matter of fact, she objected much less to dining with
the absolute lower classes than with merely snuffly
little official critics like Macmaster, and the sergeant-
major had served her turn very well when it had come
to flaying the hide off Christopher. ... So, sitting
there, she made a new pact, this time with Father Con-
sett in heaven. . . .

Father Consett was very much in her mind, for she
was very much in the midst of the British military
authorities who had hung him. . . . She had never
seemed before to be so in the midst of these negligible,
odious, unpresentable, horse-laughing schoolboys. It
antagonized her, and it was a weight upon her, for
hitherto she had completely ignored them: in this place
they seemed to have a coherence, a mass . . . almost
a life. . . . They rushed in and out of rooms oc¬
cupied, as incomprehensibly, as unpresentably, with
things like boots, washing, vaccination certificates.

. . . Even with old tins! ... A man with prema¬
turely white hair and a pasty face, with a tunic that
bulged both above and below his belt, would walk into
the drawing-room of a lady who superintended all the
acid-drop and cigarette stalls of that city and remark
to a thin-haired, deaf man with an amazingly red nose
— a nose that had a perfectly definite purple and
scarlet diagonal demarcation running from the bridge

182 MORE PARADES

to the upper side of the nostrils — that he had got his
old tins off his hands at last. He would have to repeat
it in a shout because the red-nosed man, his head
hanging down, would have heard nothing at all. The
deaf man would say Humph! Humph! Snuffle. The
woman giving the tea — a Mrs. Hemmerdine, of Tar-
bolton, whom you might have met at home, would be
saying that at last she had got twelve reams of note-
paper with forget-me-nots in the top corners when the
deaf-faced man would begin, gruffly and uninterrupt¬
edly, a monologue on his urgent need for twenty thou¬
sand tons of sawdust for the new slow-burning stoves
in the men’s huts. . . .

It was undeniably like something moving. . . . All
these things going in one direction. ... A disagree¬
able force set in motion by gawky schoolboys — but
schoolboys of the Sixth Form, sinister, hobbledehoy,
waiting in the corners of playgrounds to torture some¬
one, weak and unfortunate. ... In one or other
corner of their world-wide playground they had come
upon Father Consett and hanged him. No doubt they
tortured him first. And, if he made an offering of his
sufferings, then and there to Heaven, no doubt he was
already in paradise. . . . Or, if he was not yet in
heaven, certain of the souls in purgatory were yet
listened to in the midst of their torments. . . .

So she said:

“Blessed and martyred father, I know that you
loved Christopher and wish to save him from trouble-
I will make this pact with you. Since I have been in
this room I have kept my eyes in the boat — almost in
my lap. I will agree to leave off torturing Christopher
and I will go into retreat in a convent of Ursuline
Dames Nobles — for I can’t stand the nuns of that

183

WO {MORE PARADES

other convent— for the rest of my life. . . . And I
know that will please you, too, for you were always
anxious for the good of my soul. . . .” She was going
to do that if when she raised her eyes and really looked
round the room she saw in it one man that looked
presentable. She did not ask that he should more than
look presentable, for she wanted nothing to do with
the creature. He was to be a sign: not a prey!

She explained to the dead priest that she could
not go all the world over to see if it contained a pre¬
sentable man, but she could not bear to be in a convent
for ever, and have the thought that there wasn’t, for
other women, one presentable man in the world. . . .
For Christopher would be no good to them. He would
be mooning for ever over the Wannop girl. Or her
memory. That was all one ... He was content with
love. ... If he knew that the Wannop girl was lov¬
ing him in Bedford Park, and he in the Khyber States
with the Himalayas between them, he would be quite
content. . . . That would be correct in its way, but
not very helpful for other women. . . . Besides, if
he were the only presentable man in the world, half
the women would be in love with him. . . . And that
would be disastrous, because he was no more re¬
sponsive than a bullock in a fatting pen.

“So, father,” she said, “work a miracle. . . . It’s
not very much of a little miracle. . . . Even if a
presentable man doesn’t exist you could put him there.
. . . I’ll give you ten minutes before I look. . . .”

She thought it was pretty sporting of her, for, she
said to herself, she was perfectly in earnest. If in
that long, dim, green-lamp-shaded, and of course be-
palm-leaved, badly-proportioned, glazed, ignoble pub¬
lic room, there appeared one decentish man, as

184

ZMORE PARADES

decentish men went before this beanfeast began, she
would go into retreat for the rest of her life. . . .

She fell into a sort of dim trance after she had
looked at her watch. Often she went into these dim
trances . . . ever since she had been a girl at school
with Father Consett for her spiritual adviser! . . .
She seemed to be aware of the father moving about the
room, lifting up a book and putting it down. . . . Her
ghostly friend! . . . Goodness, he was unpresentable
enough, with his broad, open face that always looked
dirtyish, his great dark eyes, and his great mouth.
. . . But a saint and a martyr. . . . She felt him
there. . . . What had they murdered him for? Hung
at the word of a half-mad, half-drunk subaltern, be¬
cause he had heard the confession of some of the rebels
the night before they were taken. ... He was over
in the far corner of the room. . . . She heard him
say: they had not understood, the men that had
hanged him. That is what you would say, father
. . . Have mercy on them, for they know not what
they do. . . .

Then have mercy on me, for half the time I don’t
know what I’m doing! ... It was like a spell you
put on me. At Lobscheid. Where my mother was,
when I came back from that place without my clothes.
. . . You said, didn’t you, to mother, but she told me
afterwards: The real hell for that poor boy, meaning
Christopher, will come when he falls in love with some
young girl — as, mark me, he will. . . . For she, mean¬
ing me, will tear the world down to get at him. . . .
And when mother said she was certain I would never
do anything vulgar you obstinately did not agree. . . .
You knew me. . . .

She tried to rouse herself and said: He knew me.

5Y0 {MORE PARADES 185

. • . Damn it, he knew me! ... What’s vulgarity
to me, Sylvia Tietjens, born Satterth waite? I do what
1 want and that’s good enough for any one. Except a
priest. Vulgarity! I wonder mother could be so ob¬
tuse. If I am vulgar I’m vulgar with a purpose. Then
it’s not vulgarity. It may be vice. Or viciousness.
. . . But if you commit a mortal sin with your eyes
open it’s not vulgarity. . . . You chance hell fire for
ever. . . . Good enough!

The weariness sank over her again and the sense
of the father’s presence. . . . She was back again in
Lobscheid, thirty-six hours free of Perowne with the
father and her mother in the dim sitting-room, all
antlers, candle-lit, with the father’s shadow waving
over the pitchpine walls and ceilings. ... It was a
bewitched place, in the deep forests of Germany. The
father himself said it was the last place in Europe to
be Christianized. Or perhaps it was never Christian¬
ized. . . . That was perhaps why those people, the
Germans, coming from those deep, devil-infested
woods, did all these wickednesses. Or maybe they
were not wicked. . . . One would never know prop¬
erly. . . . But maybe the father had put a spell
on her. . . . His words had never been out of her
mind, much. ... At the back of her brain, as the
saying was. . . .

Some man drifted near her and said:

“How do you do, Mrs. Tietjens? Who would have
thought of seeing you here?”

She answered:

“I have to look after Christopher now and then.”
He remained hanging over her with a schoolboy grin
for a minute, then he drifted away as an object sinks

186 3\ CO £MORE PARADES

into deep water. . . . Father Consett again hovered
near her. She exclaimed:

“But the real point is, father. ... Is it sporting?

. . . Sporting or whatever it is?” And Father Con-
sett breathed: “Ah! . . .” with his terrible power of
arousing doubts. . . . She said:

“When I saw Christopher . . . Last night? . . .
Yes, it was last night. . . . Turning back to go up
that hill. . . . And I had been talking about him to
a lot of grinning private soldiers. ... To madden
him. . . . You mustn’t make scenes before the
servants. ... A heavy man, tired . . . come down
the hill and lumbering up again. . . . There was a
searchlight turned on him just as he turned. ... I
remembered the white bulldog I thrashed on the night
before it died. ... A tired, silent beast . . . with a
fat white behind. . . . Tired out. . . . You couldn’t
see its tail because it was turned down, the stump.
... A great, silent beast. . . . The vet said it had
been poisoned with red lead by burglars. . . . It’s
beastly to die of red lead. ... It eats up the liver.

. . . And you think you’re getting better for a fort¬
night. And you’re always cold . . . freezing in the
blood-vessels. . . . And the poor beast had left its
kennel to try and be let into the fire. . . . And I
found it at the door when I came in from a dance with¬
out Christopher. . . . And got the rhinoceros whip
and lashed into it. . . . There’s a pleasure in lashing
into a naked white beast. . . . Obese and silent.
. . . Like Christopher. ... I thought Christopher
might. . . . That night. ... It went through my
head. ... It hung down its head. ... A great
head, room for a whole British encyclopaedia of mis¬
information, as Christopher used to put it. . . . It

ZACO Of ORE PARADES 187

said: ‘What a hope!’ ... As I hope to be saved,
though I never shall be, the dog said: ‘What a hope!’
. . . Snow-white in quite black bushes. . . . And it
went under a bush. . . . They found it dead there
in the morning. ... You can’t imagine what it
looked like, with its head over its shoulder, as it looked
back and said: What a hope! to me. . . . Under a
dark bush. An eu . . . eu . . . euonymus, isn’t it?
. . . In thirty degrees of frost with all the blood¬
vessels exposed on the naked surface of the skin.
. . . It’s the seventh circle of hell, isn’t it? the frozen
one. . . The last stud-white bulldog of that breed.
. . . As Christopher is the last stud-white hope of the
Groby Tory breed. . . . Modelling himself on our
Lord. . . . But our Lord was never married. He
never touched on topics of sex. Good for Him. . . .”

She said: “The ten minutes is up, father . . .”
and looked at the round, starred surface between the
diamonds of her wrist watch. She said: “Good God!

. . . Only one minute. . . . I’ve thought all that in
only one minute. ... I understand how hell can be
an eternity. . . .”

Christopher, very weary, and ex-Sergeant-Major
Cowley, very talkative by now, loomed down between
palms. Cowley was saying: “It’s infamous! . . .
It’s past bearing. ... To re-order the draft at
eleven. ...” They sank into chairs. . . . Sylvia
extended towards Tietjens a small packet of letters.
She said: “You had better look at these. ... I had
your letters sent to me from the flat as there was so
much uncertainty about your movements. . . .” She
found that she did not dare, under Father Consett’s
eyes, to look at Tietjens as she said that. She said to
Cowley: “We might be quiet for a minute or two

188 &C0 DA ORE PARADES

while the captain reads his letters. . . . Have another
liqueur? . .

She then observed that Tietjens just bent open the
top of the letter from Mrs. Wannop and then opened
that from his brother Mark:

“Curse it,” she said, “I’ve given him what he wants!

. . . He knows. . . . He’s seen the address . . .
that they’re still in Bedford Park. . . . He can think
of the Wannop girl as there. . . . He has not been
able to know, till now, where she is. . . . He’ll be
imagining himself in bed with her there. . . .”

Father Consett, his broad, unmodelled dark face
full of intelligence and with the blissful unction of the
saint and martyr, was leaning over Tietjens’ shoulder.
. . . He must be breathing down Christopher’s back
as, her mother said, he always did when she held a
hand at auction and he could not play because it was
between midnight and his celebrating the holy mass.
• • •

She said:

“No, I am not going mad. . . . This is an effect
of fatigue on the optic nerves. . . . Christopher has
explained that to me . . . He says that when his
eyes have been very tired with making one of his
senior wrangler’s calculations he has often seen a
woman in a eighteenth-century dress looking into a
drawer in his bureau. . . . Thank God, I’ve had
Christopher to explain things to me. . . . I’ll never
let him go. . . . Never, never, let him go. . . .”

It was not, however, until several hours later that
the significance of the father’s apparition came to her
and those intervening hours were extraordinarily oc¬
cupied — with emotions, and even with action. To be¬
gin with, before he had read the fewest possible words

3^0 (MORE PARADES 189

of his brother’s letter, Tietjens looked up over it and
said:

“Of course you will occupy Groby. . . . With
Michael. . . . Naturally the proper business arrange¬
ments will be made. . . He went on reading the
letter, sunk in his chair under the green shade of a
lamp. . . .

The letter, Sylvia knew, began with the words:

“Your - of a wife has been to see me with the

idea of getting any allowance I might be minded to
make you transferred to herself. Of course she can
have Groby, for I shan’t let it, and could not be
bothered with it myself. On the other hand, you may
want to live at Groby with that girl and chance the
racket. I should if I were you. You would probably
find the place worth the . . . what is it? ostracism, if
there was any. . . . But I’m forgetting that the girl
is not your mistress unless anything has happened
since I saw you. . . . And you probably would want
Michael to be brought up at Groby, in which case
you couldn’t keep the girl there, even if you
camouflaged her as governess. At least I think that
kind of arrangement always turns out badly: there’s
bound to be a stink, though Crosby of Ulick did it
and nobody much minded. . . . But it was mucky
for the Crosby children. Of course if you want your
wife to have Groby she must have enough to run it
with credit, and expenses are rising damnably. Still,
our incomings rise not a little, too, which is not the
case with some. The only thing I insist on is that
you make plain to that baggage that whatever I allow
her, even if it’s no end of a hot income, not one penny
of it comes out of what I wish you would allow me
to allow you. I mean I want you to make plain to

190

{MORE PARADES

that rouged piece — or perhaps it’s really natural, my
eyes are not what they were — that what you have is
absolutely independent of what she sucks up as the
mother of our father’s heir and to keep our father’s
heir in the state of life that is his due. ... I hope you
feel satisfied that the boy is your son, for it’s more
than I should be, looking at the party. . . . But even
if he is not he is our father’s heir all right and must be
so treated. . . .

“But be plain about that, for the trollop came to
me, if you please, with the proposal that I should dock
you of any income I might propose to allow you — and
to which of course you are absolutely entitled under
our father’s will, though it is no good reminding you
of that! — as a token from me that I disapproved of
your behaviour when, damn it, there is not an action
of yours that I would not be proud to have to my
credit. At any rate in this affair, for I cannot help
thinking that you could be of more service to the coun¬
try if you were anywhere else but where you are. But
you know what your conscience demands of you bet¬
ter than I, and I dare say these hell-cats have so
mauled you that you are glad to be able to get away
into any hole. But don’t let yourself die in your hole.
Groby will have to be looked after, and even if you
do not live there you can keep a strong hand on
Sanders, or whoever you elect to have as manager.
That monstrosity you honour with your name — which
is also mine, thank you! — suggested that if I consented
to let her live at Groby she would have her mother to
live with her, in which case her mother would be good
to look after the estate. I dare say she would, though
she has had to let her own place. But then almost
every one else has. She seems anyhow a notable

191

3^0 ZMORE PARADES

woman, with her head screwed on the right way. I
did not tell the discreditable daughter that she — her
mother — had come to see me at breakfast immediately
after seeing you off, she was so upset. And she
keamert ho down i’ th’ ingle and had a gradely pow.
You remember how Gobbles the gardener used to say
that. A good chap, though he came from Lancasheere !
. . . The mother has no illusions about the daughter
and is heart and soul for you. She was dreadfully
upset at your going, the more so as she believes that
it’s her offspring has driven you out of the country and
that you purpose . . . isn’t stopping one the phrase?
Don’t do that.

“I saw your girl yesterday. . . . She looked peaky.
But of course I have seen her several times, and she
always looks peaky. I do not understand why you do
not write to them. The mother is clamorous because
you have not answered several letters and have not
sent her military information she wants for some
article she is writing for a Swiss magazine. . .

Sylvia knew the letter almost by heart as far as
that because in the unbearable white room of the
convent near Birkenhead she had twice begun to copy
it out, with the idea of keeping the copies for use in
some sort of publicity. But, at that point, she had
twice been overcome by the idea that it was not a very
sporting thing to do, if you really think about it. Be¬
sides, the letter after that — she had glanced through it
— occupied itself almost entirely with the affairs of
Mrs. Wannop. Mark, in his naive way, was con¬
cerned that the old lady, although now enjoying the
income from the legacy left her by their father, had
not immediately settled down to write a deathless

192 WO (MORE PARADES

novel; although, as he added, he knew nothing about
novels. . . .

Christopher was reading away at his letters beneath
the green-shaded lamp; the ex-quartermaster had be¬
gun several sentences and dropped into demonstrative
silence at the reminder that Tietjens was reading.
Christopher’s face was completely without expression;
he might have been reading a return from the office
of statistics in the old days at breakfast. She won¬
dered, vaguely, if he would see fit to apologize for the
epithets that his brother had applied to her. Prob¬
ably he would not. He would consider that she having
opened the letter must take the responsibility of the
contents. Something like that. Thumps and rumbles
began to exist in the relative silence. Cowley said:
“They’re coming again then!” Several couples passed
them on the way out of the room. Amongst them
there was certainly no presentable man; they were all
either too old or too hobbledehoy, with disproportion¬
ate noses and vacant, half-opened mouths.

Accompanying Christopher’s mind, as it were,
whilst he read his letter had induced in her a rather
different mood. The pictures in her own mind were
rather of Mark’s dingy breakfast-room in which she
had had her interview with him — and of the outside
of the dingy house in which the Wannops lived, at
Bedford Park. . . . But she was still conscious of
her pact with the father and, looking at her wrist
watch, saw that by now six minutes had passed. . . .
It was astonishing that Mark, who was a millionaire
at least, and probably a good deal more, should live
in such a dingy apartment— it had for its chief decora¬
tion the hoofs of several deceased race-winners,
mounted as ink-stands, as pen-racks, as paper-weights

193

<9^0 ZMORE PARADES

— and afford himself only such a lugubrious breakfast
of fat slabs of ham over which bled pallid eggs. . . .
For she too, like her mother, had looked in on Mark
at breakfast-time — her mother because she had just
seen Christopher off to France, and she because, after
a sleepless night — the third of a series — she had been
walking about St. James’s Park and, passing under
Mark’s windows, it had occurred to her that she might
do Christopher some damage by putting his brother
wise about the entanglement with Miss Wannop. So,
on the spur of the moment, she had invented a desire
to live at Groby with the accompanying necessity for
additional means. For, although she was a pretty
wealthy woman, she was not wealthy enough to live
at Groby and keep it up. The immense old place was
not so immense because of its room-space, though, as
far as she could remember, there must be anything be¬
tween forty and sixty rooms, but because of the vast
old grounds, the warren of stabling, wells, rose-walks
and fencing. ... A man’s place, really, the furniture
very grim and the corridors on the ground floor all
slabbed with great stones. So she had looked in on
Mark, reading his correspondence with his copy of
The Times airing on a chair-back before the fire — for
he was just the man to retain the eighteen-forty idea
that you can catch cold by reading a damp newspaper.
His grim, tight, brown-wooden features that might
have been carved out of an old chair, had expressed
no emotion at all during the interview. He had offered
to have up some more ham and eggs for her and had
asked one or two questions as to how she meant to
live at Groby if she went there. Otherwise he had
said nothing about the information she had given him
as to the Wannop girl having had a baby by

194 DCO Of ORE PARADES

Christopher — for purposes of conversation she had
adhered to that old story, at any rate till that inter¬
view. He had said nothing at all. Not one word.
. . . At the end of the interview, when he had risen
and produced from an adjoining room a bowler hat
and an umbrella, saying that he must now go to his
office, he had put to her without any expression pretty
well what stood in the letter, as far as business was
concerned. He said that she could have Groby, but
she must understand that, his father being now dead
and he a public official, without children and oc¬
cupied in London with work that suited him, Groby
was practically Christopher’s property to do what he
liked with as long as — which he certainly would — he
kept it in proper style. So that, if she wished to live
there, she must produce Christopher’s authorization
to that effect. And he added, with an equableness so
masking the proposition that it was not until she was
well out of the house and down the street that its true
amazingness took her breath away:

“Of course, Christopher, if what you say is true,
might want to live at Groby with Miss Wannop. In
that case he would have to.” And he had offered her
an expressionless hand and shepherded her, rather
fussily, through his dingy and awkward front passages
that were lit only from ground-glass windows giving
apparently on to his bathroom. . . .

It wasn’t until that moment, really, that, at once
with exhilaration and also with a sinking at the heart,
she realized what she was up against in the way of a
combination. For, when she had gone to Mark’s, she
had been more than half-maddened by the news that
Christopher at Rouen was in hospital and, although
the hospital authorities had assured her, at first by

mORE PARADES 195

telegram and then by letter, that it was nothing more
than his chest, she had not had any knowledge of to
what extent Red Cross authorities did or did not mis¬
lead the relatives of casualties.

So it had seemed natural that she should want to
inflict on him all the injuries that she could at the
moment, the thought that he was probably in pain
making her wish to add all she could to that pain.
. . . Otherwise, of course, she would not have gone
to Mark’s. ... For it was a mistake in strategy.
But then she said to herself: “Confound it!. . .
What strategy was it a mistake in? What do I care
about strategy? What am I out for? . . .” She did
what she wanted to, on the spur of the moment! . . .

Now she certainly realized. How Christopher had
got round Mark she did not know or much care, but
there Christopher certainly was, although his father
had certainly died of a broken heart at the rumours
that were going round about his son— rumours she,
almost as efficiently as the man called Ruggles and
more irresponsible gossips, had set going about
Christopher. They had been meant to smash
Christopher: they had smashed his father instead.
. . . But Christopher had got round Mark, whom he
had not seen for ten years. . . . Well, he probably
would. Christopher was perfectly immaculate, that
was a fact, and Mark, though he appeared half-witted
in a North Country way, was no fool. He could not
be a fool. He was a really august public official. And,
although as a rule Sylvia gave nothing at all for any
public official, if a man like Mark had the position by
birth amongst presentable men that he certainly ought
to have and was also the head of a department and
reputed absolutely indispensable — you could not ignore

196 5^0 mo RE PARADES

him. ... He said, indeed, in the later, more gossipy
parts of his letter that he had been offered a baronetcy,
but he wanted Christopher to agree with his refusing
it. Christopher would not want the beastly title after
his death, and for himself he would be rather struck
with the pip than let that harlot — meaning herself —
become Lady T. by any means of his. He had added,
with his queer solicitude, “Of course if you thought of
divorcing — which I wish to God you would, though I
agree that you are right not to — and the title would go
to the girl after my decease I’d take it gladly, for
a title is a bit of a help after a divorce. But as it is
I propose to refuse it and ask for a knighthood, if it
won’t too sicken you to have me a Sir. ... For I
hold no man ought to refuse an honour in times like
these, as has been done by certain sickening intel¬
lectuals because it is like slapping the sovereign in the
face and bound to hearten the other side, which no
doubt was what was meant by those fellows.”

There was no doubt that Mark — with the possible
addition of the Wannops — made a very strong backing
for Christopher if she decided to make a public scandal
about him. ... As for the Wannops . . . the girl
was negligible. Or possibly not, if she turned nasty
and twisted Christopher round her fingers. But the
old mother was a formidable figure — with a bad
tongue, and viewed with a certain respect in places
where people talked . . . both on account of her late
husband’s position and of the solid sort of articles she
wrote. . . . She, Sylvia, had gone to take a look at
the place where these people lived ... a dreary street
in an outer suburb, the houses — she knew enough about
estates to know — what is called tile-healed, the upper
parts of tile, the lower flimsy brick and the tiles in

{MORE PARADES 19 7

bad condition. Oldish houses really, in spite of their
sham artistic aspect, and very much shadowed by old
trees that must have been left to add to the pic¬
turesqueness. . . . The rooms poky, and they must
be very dark. . . . The residence of extreme in¬
digence, or of absolute poverty. . . . She understood
that the old lady’s income had so fallen off during the
war that they had nothing to live on but what the girl
made as a school-teacher, or a teacher of athletics in
a girls’ school. . . . She had walked two or three
times up and down the street with the idea that the
girl might come out: then it had struck her that that
was rather an ignoble proceeding, really. ... It was,
for the matter of that, ignoble that she should have a
rival who starved in an ashbin. . . . But that was
what men were like: she might think herself lucky that
the girl did not inhabit a sweetshop. . . . And the man,
Macmaster, said that the girl had a good head and
talked well, though the woman Macmaster said that
she was a shallow ignoramus. . . . That last probably
was not true; at any rate the girl had been the Mac¬
master woman’s most intimate friend for many years —
as long as they were sponging on Christopher and
until, lower middle-class snobs as they were, they be¬
gan to think they could get into Society by carneying to
herself. . . . Still, the girl probably was a good talker
and, if little, yet physically uncommonly fit. . . . A
good homespun article. . . . She wished her no ill!

What was incredible was that Christopher should
let her go on starving in such a poverty-stricken place
when he had something like the wealth of the Indies
at his disposal. . . . But the Tietjens were hard peo¬
ple! You could see that in Mark’s rooms . . . and
Christopher would lie on the floor as lief as in a goose-

198 D£0 {MORE PARADES

feather bed. And probably the girl would not take
his money. She was quite right. That was the way
to keep him. . . . She herself had no want of compre¬
hension of the stimulation to be got out of parsimonious
living. ... In retreat at her convent she lay as hard
and as cold as any anchorite, and rose to the nuns’
matins at four.

It was not, in fact, their fittings or food that she
objected to — it was that the lay-sisters, and some of the
nuns, were altogether too much of the lower classes
for her to like to have always about her. . . . That
was why it was to the Dames Nobles that she would
go, if she had to go into retreat for the rest of her life,
according to contract. . . .

A gun manned by exhilarated anti-aircraft fellows,
and so close that it must have been in the hotel garden,
shook her physically at almost the some moment as
an immense maroon popped off on the quay at the bot¬
tom of the street in which the hotel was. She was
filled with annoyance at these schoolboy exercises.
A tall, purple-faced, white-moustached general of the
more odious type, appeared in the doorway and said
that all the lights but two must be extinguished and, if
they took his advice, they would go somewhere else.
There were good cellars in the hotel. He loafed about
the room extinguishing the lights, couples and groups
passing him on the way to the door. . . . Tietjens
looked up from his letter — he was now reading one of
Mrs. Wannop’s — but seeing that Sylvia made no mo¬
tion he remained sunk in his chair. . . .

The old general said:

“Don’t get up, Tietjens. ... Sit down, lieutenant.
. . . Mrs. Tietjens, I presume. . . . But of course I

WO mo RE PARADES 199

know you are Mrs. Tietjens. . . . There’s a portrait
of you in this week’s ... I forget the name. . . .”
He sat down on the arm of a great leather chair and
told her of all the trouble her escapade to that city had
caused him. . . . He had been awakened immediately
after a good lunch by some young officer on his staff
who was scared to death by her having arrived with¬
out papers. His digestion had been deranged ever
since. . . . Sylvia said she was very sorry. He should
drink hot water and no alcohol with his lunch. She
had had very important business to discuss with Tiet¬
jens, and she had really not understood that they
wanted papers of grown-up people. The general began
to expatiate on the importance of his office and the
number of enemy agents his perspicacity caused to
be arrested every day in that city and the lines of
communication. . . .

Sylvia was overwhelmed at the ingenuity of Father
Consett. She looked at her watch. The ten minutes
were up, but there did not appear to be a soul in the
dim place. . . . The father had — and no doubt as a
Sign that there could be no mistaking!— completely
emptied that room. It was like his humour!

To make certain, she stood up. At the far end
of the room, in the dimness of the one other reading
lamp that the general had not extinguished, two figures
were rather indistinguishable. She walked towards
them, the general at her side extending civilities all
over her. He said that she need not be under any ap¬
prehension there. He adopted that device of clearing
the room in order to get rid of the beastly young
subalterns who would use the place to spoon in when
the lights were turned down. She said she was only

200 &CO {MORE PARADES

going to get a timetable from the far end of the room.
• • •

The stab of hope that she had that one of the
two figures would turn out to be the presentable man
died. . . . They were a young mournful subaltern,
with an incipient moustache and practically tears in
his eyes, and an elderly, violently indignant bald-
headed man in evening civilian clothes that must have
been made by a country tailor. He was smacking his
hands together to emphasize what, with great agita¬
tion, he was saying.

The general said that it was one of the young cubs
on his own staff getting a dressing down from his dad
for spending too much money. The young devils
would get amongst the girls — and the old ones too.
There was no stopping it. The place was a hotbed of
. . . He left the sentence unfinished. She would not
believe the trouble it gave him. . . . That hotel itself.
. . . The scandals. . . .

He said she would excuse him if he took a little nap
in one of the arm-chairs too far away to interfere with
their business talk. He would have to be up half the
night. He seemed to Sylvia a blazingly contemptible
personage — too contemptible really for Father Con-
sett to employ as an agent, in clearing the room. . . .
But the omen was given. She had to consider her
position. It meant — or did it? — that she had to be
at war with the heavenly powers! . . . She clenched
her hands. . . .

In passing by Tietjens in his chair the general
boomed out the words:

“I got your chit of this morning, Tietjens. ... I
must say . . .”

Tietjens lumbered out of his chair and stood at

&C0 Of ORE PARADES 201

attention, his leg-of-mutton hands stiffly on the seams
of his breeches.

“It’s pretty strong,” the general said, “marking a
charge-sheet sent down from my department: Case
explained. We don’t lay charges without due thought.
And Lance-Corporal Berry is a particularly reliable
N.C.O. I have difficulty enough to get them. Par¬
ticularly after the late riots. It takes courage, I can
tell you.”

“If,” Tietjens said, “you would see fit, sir, to instruct
the G.M.P. not to call Colonial troops damned con¬
scripts, the trouble would be over. . . . We’re in¬
structed to use special discretion, as officers, in dealing
with troops from the Dominions. They are said to be
very susceptible of insult. . . .”

The general suddenly became a boiling pot from
which fragments of sentences came away: damned in¬
solence; court of inquiry; damned conscripts they were
too. He calmed enough to say:

“They are conscripts, your men, aren’t they? They
give me more trouble ... I should have thought you
would have wanted . . .”

Tietjens said:

“No, sir. I have not a man in my unit, as far as
it’s Canadian or British Columbian, that is not volun¬
tarily enlisted. . . .”

The general exploded to the effect that he was bring¬
ing the whole matter before the G.O.C.I.C.’s depart¬
ment. Campion could deal with it how he wished: it
was beyond himself. He began to bluster away from
them; stopped; directed a frigid bow to Sylvia who
was not looking at him; shrugged his shoulders and
stormed off.

It was difficult for Sylvia to get hold again of her

202 ZKO SWORE PARADES

thoughts in the smoking-room, for the evening was en¬
tirely pervaded with military effects that seemed to her
the pranks of schoolboys. Indeed, after Cowley, who
had by now quite a good skinful of liquor, had said to
Tietjens:

“By Jove, I would not like to be you and a little
bit on if old Blazes caught sight of you to-night,” she
said to Tietjens with real wonder:

“You don’t mean to say that a gaga old fool like that
could have any possible influence over you . . .
You!”

Tietjens said:

“Well, it’s a troublesome business, all this. . .

She said that it so appeared to be, for before he
could finish his sentence an orderly was at his elbow
extending, along with a pencil, a number of dilapidated
papers. Tietjens looked rapidly through them, signing
one after the other and saying intermittently:

“It’s a trying time.” “We’re massing troops up the
line as fast as we can go.” “And with an endlessly
changing personnel. . . .” He gave a snort of ex¬
asperation and said to Cowley: “That horrible little
Pitkins has got a job as bombing instructor. He can’t
march the draft. . . . Who the deuce am I to detail?
Who the deuce is there? ... You know all the lit¬
tle . . He stopped because the orderly could hear.
A smart boy. Almost the only smart boy left him.

Cowley barged out of his seat and said he would
telephone to the mess to see who was there. . . . Tiet¬
jens said to the boy:

“Sergeant-Major Morgan made out these returns
of religions in the draft?”

The boy answered: “No, sir, I did. They’re all

3^0 {MORE PARADES 203

right.” He pulled a slip of paper out of his tunic
pocket and said shyly:

“If you would not mind signing this, sir . . . I can
get a lift on an A.S.C. trolley that’s going to Boulogne
to-morrow at six. . . .”

Tietjens said:

“No, you can’t have leave. I can’t spare you.
What’s it for?”

The boy said almost inaudibly that he wanted to
get married.

Tietjens, still signing, said: “Don’t. . ., . Ask
your married pals what it’s like ! ”

The boy, scarlet in his khaki, rubbed the sole of one
foot on the instep of the other. He said that saving
madam’s presence it was urgent. It was expected any
day now. She was a real good gel. Tietjens signed
the boy’s slip and handed it to him without looking up.
The boy stood with his eyes on the ground. A diver¬
sion came from the telephone, which was at the far end
of the room. Cowley had not been able to get on to
the camp because an urgent message with regard to
German espionage was coming through to the sleep¬
ing general.

Cowley began to shout: “For goodness’ sake hold
the line. ... For goodness’ sake hold the line. . . .
I’m not the general. . . . I’m not the general. . . .”
Tietjens told the orderly to awaken the sleeping war¬
rior. A violent scene at the mouth of the quiescent
instrument took place. The general roared to know
who was the officer speaking. . . . Captain Bubbley-
jocks. . . . Captain Cuddlestocks . . . what in hell’s
name! And who was he speaking for? . . . Who?
Himself? . . . Urgent was it? . . . Didn’t he know
the proper procedure was by writing? . . . Urgent

204

P£0 Of ORE PARADES

damnation! ... Did he not know where he was?
... In the First Army by the Cassell Canal. . . .
Well then . . . But the spy was in L. of C. territory,
across the canal. . . . The French civilian authori¬
ties were very concerned. . . . They were, damn
them! . . . And damn the officer. And damn the
French maire. And damn the horse the supposed spy
rode upon. . . . And when the officer was damned
let him write to First Army Headquarters about it and
attach the horse and the bandoliers as an exhibit. . . .

There was a great deal more of it. Tietjens reading
reading his papers still, intermittently explained the
story as it came in fragments over the telephone in
the general’s repetitions. . . . Apparently the French
civilian authorities of a place called Warendonck had
been alarmed by a solitary horseman in English uni¬
form who had been wandering desultorily about their
neighbourhood for several days, seeming to want to
cross the canal bridges, but finding them guarded. . . .
There was an immense artilery dump in the neighbour¬
hood, said to be the largest in the world, and the Ger¬
mans dropped bombs as thick as peas all over those
parts in the hopes of hitting it. . . . Apparently the
officer speaking was in charge of the canal bridgehead
guards: but, as he was in First Army country, it was
obviously an act of the utmost impropriety to awaken
a general in charge of the spy-catching apparatus on
the other side of the canal. . . . The general, return¬
ing past them to an arm-chair farther from the tele¬
phone, emphasized this point of view with great vigour.

The orderly had returned; Cowley went once more
to the telephone, having consumed another liqueur
brandy. Tietjens finished his papers and went through
them rapidly again. He said to the boy: “Got any-

C^CO (MORE PARADES 205

thing saved up?” The boy said: “A fiver and a
few bob.” Tietjens said: “How many bob?” The
boy: “Seven, sir.” Tietjens, fumbling clumsily in an
inner pocket and a little pocket beneath his belt, held
out one leg-of-mutton fist and said: “There! That
will double it. Ten pounds fourteen! But it’s very
improvident of you. See that you save up a deuced
lot more against the next one. Accouchements are con¬
foundedly expensive things, as you’ll learn, and ring
money doesn’t stretch for ever! . . .” He called out
to the retreating boy: “Here, orderly, come back.
. . He added: “Don’t let it get all over camp.
... I can’t afford to subsidize all the seven-months
children in the battalion. . . . I’ll recommend you for
paid lance-corporal when you return from leave if you
go on as well as you have done.” He called the boy
back again to ask him why Captain McKechnie had
not signed the papers. The boy stuttered and stam¬
mered that Captain McKechnie was ... He was . . .

Tietjens muttered: “Good God!” beneath his
breath. He said:

“The captain has had another nervous breakdown.

. . .” The orderly accepted the phrase with gratitude.
That was it. A nervous breakdown. They say he
had been very queer at mess. About divorce. Or the
captain’s uncle. A barrow-night! Tiet^sns said:
“Yes, yes” He half rose in his chair and looked at
Sylvia. She exclaimed painfully:

“You can’t go. I insist that you can’t go.” He
sank down again and muttered wearily that it was very
worrying. He had been put in charge of this officer
by General Campion. He ought not to have left the
camp at all perhaps. But McKechnie had seemed bet¬
ter. A great deal of the calmness of her insolence had

206

{MORE PARADES

left her. She had expected to have the whole night in
which luxuriously to torment the lump opposite her.
To torment him and to allure him. She said:

“You have settlements to come to now and here that
will affect your whole life. Our whole lives! You pro¬
pose to abandon them because a miserable little nephew
of your miserable little friend. . . .” She added in
French: “Even as it is you cannot pay any attention
to these serious matters, because of these childish pre¬
occupations of yours. That is to be intolerably in¬
sulting to me!” She was breathless.

Tietjens asked the orderly where Captain McKech-
nie was now. The orderly said he had left the camp.
The colonel of the depot had sent a couple of officers as
a search-party. Tietjens told the orderly to go and
find a taxi. He could have a ride himself up to camp.
The orderly said taxis would not be running on account
of the air-raid. Could he order the G.M.P. to requisi¬
tion one on urgent military service? The exhilarated
air-gun pooped off thereupon three times from the
garden. For the next hour it went off every two or
three minutes. Tietjens said: “Yes! Yes!” to the
orderly. The noises of the air-raid became more for¬
midable. A blue express letter of French civilian
make was handed to Tietjens. It was from the duchess
to inform him that coal for the use of greenhouses was
forbidden by the French Government. She did not
need to say that she relied on his honour to ensure her
receiving her coal through the British military author¬
ity, and she asked for an immediate reply. Tietjens
expressed real annoyance while he read this. Dis¬
tracted by the noise, Sylvia cried out that the letter
must be from Valentine Wannop in Rouen. Did not
the girl intend to let him have an hour in which to settle

3^0 {MORE PARADES 207

the whole business of his life? Tietjens moved to the
chair next to hers. He handed her the duchess’s letter.

He began a long, slow, serious explanation with a
long, slow, serious apology. He said he regretted very
much that when she should have taken the trouble to
come so far in order to do him the honour to consult
him about a matter which she would have been per¬
fectly at liberty to settle for herself, the extremely
serious military position should render him so liable to
interruption. As far as he was concerned Groby was
entirely at her disposal with all that it contained. And
of course a sufficient income for the upkeep.

She exclaimed in an access of sudden and complete
despair :

“That means that you do not intend to live there.”
He said that that must settle itself later. The war
would no doubt last a good deal longer. While it lasted
there could be no question of his coming back. She
said that that meant that he intended to get killed.
She warned him that, if he got killed, she should cut
down the great cedar at the south-west corner of
Groby. It kept all the light out of the principal draw¬
ing-room and the bed-rooms above it. . . . He winced:
he certainly winced at that. She regretted that she had
said it. It was along other lines that she desired to
make him wince.

He said that, apart from his having no intention of
getting himself killed, the matter was absolutely out
of his hands. He had to go where he was ordered to
go and do what he was told to do.

She exclaimed:

“You! You! Isn’t it ignoble. That you should be
at the beck and call of these ignoramuses. You!”

He went on explaining seriously that he was in no

208 DCO (MORE PARADES

great danger — in no danger at all unless he was sent
back to his battalion. And he was not likely to be sent
back to his battalion unless he disgraced himself or
showed himself negligent where he was. That was un¬
likely. Besides his category was so low that he was
not eligible for his battalion, which, of course, was in
the line. She ought to understand that every one that
she saw employed there was physically unfit for the
line. She said:

“That’s why they’re such an awful lot. ... It is not
to this place that one should come to look for a pre¬
sentable man. . . . Diogenes with his lantern was
nothing to it.”

He said:

“There’s that way of looking at it. . . . It is quite
true that most of . . . let’s say your friends . . .
were killed off during the early days, or if they’re still
going they’re in more active employments.” What she
called presentableness was very largely a matter of
physical fitness. . . . The horse, for instance, that he
rode was rather a crock. . . . But though it was Ger¬
man and not thoroughbred it contrived to be up to his
weight. . . . Her friends, more or less, of before the
war were professional soldiers or of the type. Well,
they were gone: dead or snowed under. But on the
other hand, this vast town full of crocks did keep the
thing going, if it could be made to go. It was not they
that hindered the show: if it was hindered, that was
done by her much less presentable friends, the minis¬
try who, if they were professionals at all were profes¬
sional boodlers.

She exclaimed with bitterness:

“Then why didn’t you stay at home to check them,
if they are boodlers.” She added that the only people

209

£\ CO £MORE PARADES

at home who kept social matters going at all with any
life were precisely the more successful political pro¬
fessionals. When you were with them you would not
know there was any war. And wasn’t that what was
wanted? Was the whole of life to be given up to
ignoble horseplay? . . . She spoke with increased ran¬
cour because of the increasing thump and rumble of
the air-raid. ... Of course the politicians were ignoble
beings that, before the war, you would not have thought
of having in your house. . . . But whose fault was
that, if not that of the better classes, who had gone
away leaving England a dreary wilderness of fellows
without consciences or traditions or manners? And
she added some details of the habits at a country house
of a member of the Government whom she disliked.
“And,” she finished up, “it’s your fault. Why aren’t
you Lord Chancellor, or Chancellor of the Exchequer,
instead of whoever is, for I am sure I don’t know?
You could have been, with your abilities and your
interests. Then things would have been efficiently and
honestly conducted. If your brother Mark, with not
a tithe of your abilities can be a permanent head of
a department, what could you not have risen to with
your gifts, and your influence . . . and your integ¬
rity?” And she ended up: “Oh, Christopher!” on
almost a sob.

Ex-Sergeant-Major Cowley, who had come back
from the telephone, and during an interval in the thun-
derings, had heard some of Sylvia’s light cast on the
habits of members of the home Government, so that
his jaw had really hung down, now, in another interval,
exclaimed:

“Hear, hear! Madam! . . . There is nothing the
captain might not have risen to. ... He is doing the

210

WO {MORE PARADES

work of a brigadier now on the pay of an acting cap¬
tain. . . . And the treatment he gets is scandalous.
. . . Well, the treatment we all get is scandalous,
tricked and defrauded as we are all at every turn. . . .
And look at this new start with the draft. . . They
had ordered the draft to be ready and countermanded
it, and ordered it to be ready and countermanded it,
until no one knew whether he stood on is ’ed or is
’eels. ... It was to have gone off last night: when
they’d ’ad it marched down to the station they ’ad it
marched back and told them all it would not be wanted
for six weeks. . . . Now it was to be got ready to go
before daylight to-morrow morning in motor-lorries to
the rail Ondekoeter way, the rail here ’aving been sa¬
botaged! . . . Before daylight so that the enemy aero¬
planes should not see it on the road. . . . Wasn’t that
a thing to break the ’arts of men and horderly rooms?
It was outrageous. Did they suppose the ’Uns did
things like that?

He broke off to say with husky enthusiasm of affec¬
tion to Tietjens: “Look ’ere old ... I mean, sir
. . . There’s no way of getting hold of an officer to
march the draft. Them as are eligible gets to ’ear of
what drafts is going and they’ve all bolted into their
burries. Not a man of ’em will be back in camp be¬
fore five to-morrow morning. Not when they ’ears
there’s a draft to go at four of mornings like this. . . .
Now . . .” His voice became husky with emotion as
he offered to take the draft hisself to oblige Captain
Tietjens. And the captain knew he could get a draft
off pretty near as good as himself: or very near. As
for the draft-conducting major he lived in that hotel
and he, Cowley, ’ad seen ’im. No four in the morning
for ’im. He was going to motor to Ondekoeter Station

211

3^0 zMORE PARADES

about seven. So there was no sense in getting the draft
off before five, and it was still dark then: too dark
for the ’Un planes to see what was moving. He’d be
glad if the captain would be up at the camp by five
to take a final look and to sign any papers that only
the commanding officer could sign. But he knew the
captain had had no sleep the night before because of
his, Cowley’s, infirmity, mostly, so he couldn’t do less
than give up a day and a half of his leave to taking
the draft. Besides, he was going home for the duration
and he would not mind getting a look at the old places
they’d seen in ’fourteen, for the last time as a Cook’s
tourist. . . .

Tietjens, who was looking noticeably white, said:

“Do you remember O Nine Morgan at Noircourt?”

Cowley said:

“No. . . . Was ’e there? In your company, I sup¬
pose? . . . The man you mean that was killed yes¬
terday. Died in your arms owing to my oversight.
I ought to have been there.” He said to Sylvia with
the gloating idea N.C.O.’s had that wives liked to hear
of their husband’s near escapes: “Killed within a foot
of the captain, ’e was. An ’orrible shock it must ’ave
been for the captain.” A horrible mess. . . . The
captain held him in his arms while he died. ... As
if he’d been a baby. Wonderful tender, the captain
was! Well, you’re apt to be when it’s one of your own
men. . . . No rank then! “Do you know the only
time the King must salute a private soldier and the
private takes no notice? . . . When ’e’s dead. . . .”

Both Sylvia and Tietjens were silent — and silvery
white in the greenish light from the lamp. Tietjens
indeed had shut his eyes. The old N.C.O. went on re¬
joicing to have the floor to himself. He had got on

212 5Y*0 ZMORE PARADES

his feet preparatory to going up to camp, and he
swayed a little. . . .

“No,” he said and he waved his cigar gloriously,
“I don’t remember O Nine Morgan at Noircourt. . . .
But I remember . . .”

Tietjens, with his eyes still shut, said:

“I only thought he might have been a man. . . .”

“No,” the old fellow went on imperiously, “I don’t
remember ’im. . . . But, Lord, I remember what hap¬
pened to you!” He looked down gloriously upon
Sylvia: “The captain caught ’is foot in. . . . You’d
never believe what ’e caught ’is foot in! Never! . . .
A pretty quiet affair it was, with a bit of moonlight.
. . . Nothing much in the way of artillery. . . . Per¬
haps we surprised the ’Uns proper, perhaps they were
wanting to give up their front-line trenches for a pur¬
pose. . . . There was next to no one in ’em. ... I
know it made me nervous. . . . My heart was fair in
my boots, because there was so little doing! ... It
was when there was little doing that the ’Uns could be
expected to do their worst. ... Of course there was
some machine-gunning. . . . There was one in par¬
ticular away to the right of us. . . . And the moon,
it was shining in the early morning. Wonderful peace¬
ful. And a little mist. . . . And frozen hard. . . .
Hard as you wouldn’t believe. . . . Enough to make
the shells dangerous.”

Sylvia said:

“It’s not always mud, then?” and Tietjens, to her:
“He’ll stop if you don’t like it.” She said monoton¬
ously: “No ... I want to hear.”

Cowley drew himself for his considerable effect:

“Mud!” he said. “Not then. . . . Not by half.

. . . I tell you, ma’am, we trod on the frozen faces of

£V0 c VAORE PARADES 213

dead Germans as we doubled. ... A terrible lot of
Germans we’d killed a day or so before. . . . That
was no doubt the reason they give up the trenches so
easy: difficult to attack from, they was. . . . Anyhow,
they left the dead for us to bury, knowing probably
they were going, with a better ’eart! . . . But it fair
put the wind up me anyhow to think of what their
counter-attack was going to be. . . . The counter¬
attack is always ten times as bad as the preliminary
resistance. They ’as you with the rear of their trenches
— the parados, we call it — as your front to boot. So
I was precious glad when the moppers-up and sup¬
ports come and went through us. . . . Laughing, they
was. . . . Wiltshires. . . . My missus comes from
that county. . . . Mrs. Cowley, I mean. ... So I’d
seen the captain go down earlier on and I’d said:
‘There’s another of the best stopped one. . . .’ ” He
dropped his voice a little: he was one of the noted
yarners of the regiment: “Caught ’is foot, ’e ’ad, be¬
tween two ’ands. . . . Sticking up out of the frozen
ground. ... As it might be in prayer. . . . Like
this!” He elevated his two hands, the cigar between
the fingers, the wrists close together and the fingers
slightly curled inwards: “Sticking up in the moon¬
light. . . . Poor devil!”

Tietjens said:

“I thought perhaps it was O Nine Morgan I saw
that night. . . . Naturally I looked dead. ... I
hadn’t a breath in my body. . . . And I saw a Tommy
put his rifle to his pal’s upper arm and fire. ... As
I lay on the ground. . . .”

Cowley said:

“Ah, you saw that ... I heard the men talking

214 (A CO {MORE PARADES

of it. . . . But they naturally did not say who and
where!”

Tietjens said with a negligence that did not ring
true:

“The wounded man’s name was Stilicho. ... A
queer name. ... I suppose it’s Cornish. ... It was
B Company in front of us.”

“You didn’t bring ’em to a court martial?” Cowley
asked. Tietjens said: No. He could not be quite
certain. Though he was certain. But he had been
worrying about a private matter. He had been worry¬
ing about it while he lay on the ground and that
rather obscured his sense of what he saw. Besides,
he said faintly, an officer must use his judgment. He
had judged it better in this case not to have seen
the . . . His voice had nearly faded away: it was clear
to Sylvia that he was coming to a climax of some men¬
tal torture. Suddenly he exclaimed to Cowley:

“Supposing I let him off one life to get him killed
two years after. My God! That would be too
beastly!”

Cowley snuffled in Tietjens’ ear something that
Sylvia did not catch — consolatory and affectionate.
That intimacy was more than she could bear. She
adopted her most negligent tone to ask:

“I suppose the one man had been trifling with the
other’s girl. Or wife!”

Cowley exploded: “God bless you, no! They’d
agreed upon it between them. To get one of them
sent ’ome and the other, at any rate, out of that ’ell,
leading him back to the dressing-station.” She said:

“You mean to say that a man would do that, to get
out of it? . . .”

Cowley said:

215

WO Of ORE PARADES

“God bless you, ma’am, with the ’ ell the Tommies
’as of it. . . . For it’s in the line that the difference
between the Other Ranks’ life and the officers’ comes
in. ... I tell you, ma’am, old soldier as I am, and
I’ve been in seven wars one with another . . . there
were times in this war when I could have shrieked,
holding my right hand down. . . .”

He paused and said: “It was my idea. . . . And
it’s been a good many others,’ that if I ’eld my ’and
up over the parapet with perhaps my hat on it, in two
minutes there would be a German sharpshooter’s bullet
through it. And then me for Blighty, as the soldiers
say. . . . And if that could happen to me, a regimental
sergeant-major, with twenty-three years in the serv¬
ice . . .”

The bright orderly came in, said he had found a
taxi, and melted into the dimness.

“A man,” the sergeant-major said, “would take the
risk of being shot for wounding his pal. . . . They get
to love their pals, passing the love of women. . . .”
Sylvia exclaimed: “Oh!” as if at a pang of toothache.
“They do, ma’am,” he said, “it’s downright touch¬
ing. . .

He was by now very unsteady as he stood, but his
voice was quite clear. That was the way it took
him. He said to Tietjens:

“It’s queer, what you say about home worries taking
up your mind. ... I remember in the Afghan cam¬
paign, when we were in the devil of a hot corner, I
got a letter from my wife, Mrs. Cowley, to say that
our Winnie had the measles. . . . And there was only
one difference between me and Mrs. Cowley: I said
that a child must have flannel next its skin, and she
said flannelette was good enough. Wiltshire doesn’t

216

mORE PARADES

hold by wool as Lincolnshire does. Long fleeces the
Lincolnshire sheep have. . . . And dodging the Af¬
ghan bullets all day among the boulders as we was, all
I could think of. . . . For you know, ma’am, being a
mother yourself, that the great thing with measles is
to keep a child warm. ... I kep’ saying to myself — ■
’arf crying I was — ‘If she only keeps wool next
Winnie’s skin! If she only keeps wool next Winnie’s
skin!’ . . . But you know that, being a mother your¬
self. I’ve seen your son’s photo on the captain’s dress¬
ing-table. Michael, ’is name is. . . . So you see, the
captain doesn’t forget you and ’im.”

Sylvia said in a clear voice:

“Rerhaps you would not go on!”

Distracted as she was by the anti-air-gun in the
garden, though it was on the other side of the hotel
and permitted you to get in a sentence or two before
splitting your head with a couple of irregular explo¬
sions, she was still more distracted by a sudden vision
— a remembrance of Christopher’s face when their boy
had had a temperature of 105 ° with the measles, up
at his sister’s house in Yorkshire. He had taken the
responsibility, which the village doctor would not face,
of himself placing the child in a bath full of split ice.

. . . She saw him bending, expressionless in the strong
lamp-light, with the child in his clumsy arms over
the glittering, rubbled surface of the bath. ... He
was just as expressionless then as now. ... He re¬
minded her now of how he had been then: some strain
in the lines of the face perhaps that she could not
analyse. . . . Rather as if he had a cold in the head —
a little suffocating, with suppressing his emotions, of
course: his eyes looking at nothing. You would not
have said that he even saw the child — heir to Groby

217

D£0 {MORE PARADES

and all that! . . . Something had said to her, just in
between two crashes of the gun “It’s his own child.
He went as you might say down to hell to bring it
back to life. . . .” She knew it was Father Consett
saying that. She knew it was true: Christopher had
been down to hell to bring the child back. . . . Fancy
facing its pain in that dreadful bath! . . . The ther¬
mometer had dropped, running down under their eyes.
. . . Christopher had said: “A good heart, he’s got!
A good plucked one!” and then held his breath, watch¬
ing the thin filament of bright mercury drop to nor¬
mal. . . . She said now, between her teeth: “The
child is his property as much as the damned estate.
. . . Well, I’ve got them both. . . .”

But it wasn’t at this juncture that she wanted him
tortured over that. So, when the second gun had done
its crash, she had said to the bibulous old man:

“I wish you would not go on!” And Christopher
had been prompt to the rescue of the convenances
with:

“Mrs. Tietjens does not see eye to eye with us in
some matters!”

She said to herself: “Eye to eye! My God! . . .”
The whole of this affair, the more she saw of it, over¬
whelmed her with a sense of hatred. . . . And of de¬
pression! . . . She saw Christopher buried in this
welter of fools, playing a schoolboy’s game of make-
believe. But of a make-believe that was infinitely for¬
midable and infinitely sinister. . . . The crashings of
the gun and of all the instruments for making noise
seemed to her so atrocious and odious because they
were, for her, the silly pomp of a schoolboy-man’s
game. . . . Campion, or some similar schoolboy, said:
“Hullo! Some German airplanes about. . . . That

218

[MORE PARADES

lets us out on the air-gun! Let’s have some pops!”
... As they fire guns in the park on the King’s birth¬
day. It was sheer insolence to have a gun in the gar¬
den of an hotel where people of quality might be
sleeping or wishing to converse!

At home she had been able to sustain the conviction
that it was such a game. . . . Anywhere: at the house
of a minister of the Crown, at dinner, she had only
to say: “Do let us leave off talking of these odious
things. . . .” And immediately there would be ten or
a dozen voices, the minister’s included, to agree with
Mrs. Tietjens of Groby that they had altogether too
much of it. . . .

But here! . . . She seemed to be in the very belly
of the ugly affair. ... It moved and moved, under
your eyes dissolving, yet always there. As if you
should try to follow one diamond of pattern in the coil
of an immense snake that was in irrevocable motion.
. . . It gave her a sense of despair: the engrossment
of Tietjens, in common with the engrossment of this
disreputable toper. She had never seen Tietjens put
his head together with any soul before: he was the
lonely buffalo. . . . Now! Anyone: any fatuous staff-
officer, whom at home he would never so much as have
spoken to: any trustworthy beer-sodden sergeant, any
street urchin dressed up as orderly. . . . They had
only to appear and all his mind went into a close-
headed conference over some ignoble point in the child’s
game: The laundry, the chiropody, the religions, the
bastards ... of millions of the indistinguishable. ... Or
their deaths as well! But, in heaven’s name what hypo¬
crisy, or what inconceivable chicken-heartedness was
this? They promoted this beanfeast of carnage for
their own ends: they caused the deaths of men in incon-

219

O {MORE PARADES

ceivable holocausts of pain and terror. Then they had
crises of agony over the death of one single man. For
it was plain to her that Tietjens was in the middle of a
full nervous breakdown. Over one man’s death! She
had never seen him so suffer; she had never seen him
so appeal for sympathy: him, a cold fiend of reticence!
Yet he was now in an agony! Now! . . . And she be¬
gan to have a sense of the infinitely spreading welter
of pain, going away to an eternal horizon of night.
. . . ’Ell for the Other Ranks ! Apparently it was hell
for the officers as well.

The real compassion in the voice of that snuffling,
half-drunken old man had given her a sense of that
enormous wickedness. . . . These horrors, these in¬
finities of pain, this atrocious condition of the world
had been brought about in order that men should in¬
dulge themselves in orgies of promiscuity. . . . That
in the end was at the bottom of male honour, of male
virtue, observance of treaties, upholding of the flag.
... An immense warlock’s carnival of appetites, lusts,
ebrieties. . . . And once set in motion there was no
stopping it. . . . This state of things would never
cease. . . . Because once they had tasted of the joy
— the blood — of this game, who would let it end? . . .
These men talked of these things that occupied them
there with the lust of men telling dirty stories in smok¬
ing-rooms. . . . That was the only parallel!

There was no stopping it, any more than there was
any stopping the by now all but intoxicated ex-
sergeant-major. He was off! With, as might be ex¬
pected, advice to a young couple with differences of
opinion! The wine had made him bold!

In the depth of her pictures of these horrors,
snatches of his wisdom penetrated to her intelligence.

220 {MORE PARADES

. . . Queer snatches. . . . She was getting it certainly
in the neck! . . . Someone, to add to the noise, had
started some mechanical musical instrument in an
adjacent hall.

“Corn an’ lasses
Served by Ras’us!”

a throaty voice proclaimed,

“I’d be tickled to death to know that I could go
And stay right there . .

The ex-sergeant-major was adding to her knowledge
the odd detail that when he, Sergeant-Major Cowley,
went to the wars — seven of them — his missus, Mrs.
Cowley, spent the first three days and nights unpick¬
ing and re-hemstitching every sheet and pillow-slip in
the ’ouse. To keep ’erself f’m thinking. . . . This
was apparently meant as a reproof or an exhortation
to her, Sylvia Tietjens. . . . Well, he was all right!
Of the same class as Father Consett, and with the same
sort of wisdom.

The gramophone howled: a new note of rumbling
added itself to the exterior tumult and continued
through six mitigated thumps of the gun in the garden.
. . . In the next interval, Cowley was in the midst
of a valedictory address to her. He was asking her
to remember that the captain had had a sleepless night
the night before.

There occurred to her irreverent mind a sentence
of one of the Duchess of Marlborough’s letters to
Queen Anne. The duchess had visited the general dur¬
ing one of his campaigns in Flanders. “My Lord,”
she wrote, “did me the honour three times in his
boots!” . . . The sort of thing she would remember.
. . . She would — she would — have tried it on the
sergeant-major, just to see Tietjens’ face, for the
sergeant-major would not have understood. . . . And

221

SWORE PARADES

who cared if he did! . . . He was bibulously skirting
round the same idea. . . .

But the tumult increased to an incredible volume:
even the thrillings of the near-by gramophone of two
hundred horse-power, or whatever it was, became mere
shimmerings of a gold thread in a drab fabric of sound.
She screamed blasphemies that she was hardly aware
of knowing. She had to scream against the noise:
she was no more responsible for the blasphemy than if
she had lost her identity under an anaesthetic. She had
lost her identity. . . . She was one of this crowd!

The general woke in his chair and gazed malevo¬
lently at their group as if they alone were responsible
for the noise. It dropped. Dead! You only knew
it, because you caught the tail end of a belated
woman’s scream from the hall and the general shout¬
ing: “For God’s sake don’t start that damned gramo¬
phone again!” In the blessed silence, after prelim¬
inary wheezings and guitar noises an astonishing voice
burst out:

“Less than the dust . . .

Before thy char . . .”

And then, stopping after a murmur of voices, began:

“Pale hands I loved . . .”

The general sprang from his chair and rushed to
the hall. . . . He came back crestfallenly.

“It’s some damned civilian big-wig. ... A novelist,
they say. ... I can’t stop him. . . .” He added with
disgust: “The hall’s full of young beasts and harlots.
. . . Dancing !” . . . The melody had indeed, after a
buzz, changed to a languorous and interrupted varia¬
tion of a waltz. “Dancing in the dark!” the general
said with enhanced disgust. . . . “And the Germans
may be here at any moment. ... If they knew what
I know! . . .”

222

O MORE PARADES

Sylvia called across to him:

“Wouldn’t it be fun to see the blue uniform with
the silver buttons again and some decently set-up
men? . .

The general shouted:

“I’d be glad to see them. . . . I’m sick to death of
these. . .

Tietjens took up something he had been saying to
Cowley: what it was Sylvia did not hear, but Cowley
answered, still droning on with an idea Sylvia thought
they had got past:

“I remember when I was sergeant in Quetta, I de¬
tailed a man — called Herring — for watering the com¬
pany horses, after he begged off it because he had a
fear of horses. ... A horse got him down in the river
and drowned ’im. . . . Fell with him and put its foot
on his face. ... A fair sight he was. ... It wasn’t
any good my saying anything about military exigencies.

. . . Fair put me off my feed, it did. . . . Cost me a
fortune in Epsom salts. . .

Sylvia was about to scream out that if Tietjens did
not like men being killed it ought to sober him in his
war-lust, but Cowley continued meditatively:

“Epsom salts they say is the cure for it. . . . For
seeing your dead. . . . And of course you should keep
off women for a fortnight. ... I know I did. Kept
seeing Herring’s face with the hoof-mark. And . . .
there was a piece: a decent bit of goods in what we
called the Government Compound. . .

He suddenly exclaimed:

“Saving your . . . Ma’am, I’m . . He stuck the
stump of the cigar into his teeth and began assuring
Tietjens that he could be trusted with the draft next
morning, if only Tietjens would put him into the taxi.

D£0 (MORE PARADES 223

He went away, leaning on Tietjens’ arm, his legs
at an angle of sixty degrees with the carpet. . . .

“He can’t . . .” Sylvia said to herself, “he can’t,
not ... If he’s a gentleman. . . . After all that old
fellow’s hints. . . . He’d be a damn coward if he kept
off. . . . For a fortnight. . . . And who else is there
not a public . . .” She said: “O God! . . .”

The old general, lying in his chair, turned his face
aside to say:

“I wouldn’t, madam, not if I were you, talk about
the blue uniform with silver buttons here. . . . We, of
course, understand. . . .”

She said: “You see . . . even that extinct volcano
. . . He’s undressing me with his eyes full of blood
veins. . . . Then why cant he? . . .”

She said aloud:

“Oh, but even you, general, said you were sick of
your companions!”

She said to herself:

“Hang it! ... I will have the courage of my con¬
victions. . . . No man shall say I am a coward. . . .”

She said:

“Isn’t it saying the same thing as you, general, to
say that I’d rather be made love to by a well-set-up
man in blue and silver — or anything else! — than bjr
most of the people one sees here! . . .”

The general said:

“Of course, if you put it that way, madam. . . .”

She said:

“What other way should a woman put it?” . . .
She reached to the table and filled herself a lot of
brandy. The old general was leering towards her:

“Bless me,” he said, “a lady who takes liquor like
that . . .”

224

(^O (MORE PARADES

She said:

“You’re a Papist, aren’t you? With the name of
O’Hara and the touch of the brogue you have . . .
And the devil you no doubt are with. . . . You know
what. . . . Well, then . . . It’s with a special inten¬
tion! ... As you say your Hail, Maries. . . .”

With the liquor burning inside her she saw Tietjens
loom in the dim light.

The general, to her bitter amusement, said to him:

“Your friend was more than a bit on. . . . Not the
Society surely for madam!”

Tietjens said:

“I never expected to have the pleasure of dining
with Mrs. Tietjens to-night. . . . That officer was
celebrating his commission and I could not put him
off. . . .” The general said: “Oh, ah! ... Of course
not. ... I dare say . . .” and settled himself again
in his chair. . . .

Tietjens was overwhelming her with his great bulk.
She had still lost her breath. . . . He stooped over and
said: It was the luck of the half-drunk; he said:

“They’re dancing in the lounge. . . .”

She coiled herself passionately into her wickerwork.
It had dull blue cushions. She said:

“Not with anyone else. ... I don’t want any in¬
troductions. . . .” Fiercely! . . . He said:

“There’s no one there that I could introduce you
to. . .

She said:

“Not if it’s a charity!”

He said:

“I thought it might be rather dull. . . . It’s six
months since I danced. . . .” She felt beauty flowing
over all her limbs. She had a gown of gold tissue. Her

D£0 {MORE PARADES 225

matchless hair was coiled over her ears. . . She was
humming Venusberg music: she knew music if she knew
nothing else. . . .

She said: “You call the compounds where you keep
the W.A.A.C.’s Venusberg’s, don’t you? Isn’t it queer
that Venus should be your own? . . . Think of poor
Elisabeth!”

The room where they were dancing was very dark.
. . . It was queer to be in his arms. . . . She had
known better dancers. ... He had looked ill. . . .
Perhaps he was. . . . Oh, poor Valentine-Elisabeth.
. . . What a funny position! . . . The good gramo¬
phone played. . . . Destiny! . . . You see, father!
... In his arms ! ... Of course, dancing is not really.
. . . But so near the real thing! So near! . . . “Good
luck to the special intention! . . .” She had almost
kissed him on the lips. ... All but! . . . Efileurer,
the French call it. . . . But she was not as humble.
. . . He had pressed her tighter. . . . All these months
without . . . My lord did me honour . . . Good for
Malbrouck s’en va-t-en guerre. ... He knew she had
almost kissed him on the lips. . . . And that his lips
had almost responded. . . . The civilian,, the novelist,
had turned out the last light. . . . Tietjens said,
“Hadn’t we better talk? . . .” She said: “In my room,
then! I’m dog-tired. ... I haven’t slept for six
nights. ... In spite of drugs. . . .” He said: “Yes.
Of course! Where else? . . .” Astonishingly. . . .
Her gown of gold tissue was like the colobium sidonis
the King wore at the coronation. ... As they
mounted the stairs she thought what a fat tenor Tann-
hauser always was! . . . The Venusberg music was din¬
ning in her ears. . . . She said: “Sixty-six inexpres¬
sibles! I’m as sober as a judge ... I need to be!”

PART III

CHAPTER I

A shadow — the shadow of the General Officer Com¬
manding in Chief — falling across the bar of light that
the sunlight threw in at his open door seemed provi¬
dentially to awaken Christopher Tietjens, who would
have thought it extremely disagreeable to be found
asleep by that officer. Very thin, graceful and gay
with his scarlet gilt oak-leaves, and ribbons, of which
he had many, the general was stepping attractively
over the sill of the door, talking backwards over his
shoulder, to someone outside. So, in the old days,
Gods had descended! It was, no doubt, really the
voices from without that had awakened Tietjens, but
he preferred to think the matter a slight intervention
of Providence, because he felt in need of a sign of
some sort! Immediately upon awakening he was not
perfectly certain of where he was, but he had sense
enough to answer with coherence the first question
that the general put to him and to stand stiffly on his
legs. The general had said:

“Will you be good enough to inform me, Captain
Tietjens, why you have no fire-extinguishers in your
unit? You are aware of the extremely disastrous con¬
sequences that would follow a conflagration in your
lines?”

Tietjens said stiffly:

“It seems impossible to obtain them, sir.”

227

228

ZMORE PARADES

The general said:

“How is this? You have indented for them in
the proper quarter. Perhaps you do not know what
the proper quarter is?”

Tietjens said:

“If this were a British unit, sir, the proper quarter
would be the Royal Engineers.” When he had sent
his indent in for them to the Royal Engineers they in¬
formed him that this being a unit of troops from the
Dominions, the quarter to which to apply was the
Ordnance. On applying to the Ordnance, he was in¬
formed that no provision was made of fire-extin¬
guishers for troops from the Dominions under Imperial
officers, and that the proper course w7as to obtain
them from a civilian firm in Great Britain, charging
them against barrack damages. . . . He had applied
to several firms of manufacturers, who all replied that
they were forbidden to sell these articles to anyone
but to the War Office direct. . . . “I am still applying
to civilian firms,” he finished.

The officer accompanying the general was Colonel
Levin, to whom, over his shoulder, the general said:
“Make a note of that, Levin, will you? and get the
matter looked into.” He said again to Tietjens:

“In walking across your parade-ground I noticed
that your officer in charge of your physical training
knew conspicuously nothing about it. You had better
put him on to cleaning out your drains. He was un¬
reasonably dirty.”

Tietjens said:

“The sergeant-instructor, sir, is quite competent.
The officer is an R.A.S.C. officer. I have at the mo¬
ment hardly any infantry officers in the unit. But

5^0 DA ORE PARADES 229

officers have to be on these parades — by A.C.I. They
give no orders.”

The general said dryly:

“I was aware from the officer’s uniform of what
arm he belonged to. I am not saying you do not do
your best with the material at your command.” From
Campion on parade this was an extraordinary gracious¬
ness. Behind the general’s back Levin was making
signs with his eyes which he meaningly closed and
opened. The general, however, remained extraor¬
dinarily dry in manner, his face having its perfectly
expressionless air of studied politeness which allowed
no muscle of its polished-cherry surface to move. The
extreme politeness of the extremely great to the su¬
premely unimportant!

He glanced round the hut markedly. It was
Tietjens’ own office and contained nothing but the
blanket-covered tables and, hanging from a strut, an
immense calendar on which days were roughly crossed
out in red ink and blue pencil. He said:

“Go and get your belt. You will go round your
cook-houses with me in a quarter of an hour. You
can tell your sergeant-cook. What sort of cocking
arrangements have you?”

Tietjens said:

“Very good cook-houses, sir.”

The general said:

“You’re extremely lucky, then. Extremely lucky!

. . . Half the units like yours in this camp haven’t
anything but company cookers and field ovens in the
open. . . .” He pointed with his crop at the open door.
He repeated with extreme distinctness “Go and get
your belt!” Tietjens wavered a very little on his
feet. He said:

230

D£0 MORE PARADES

“You are aware, sir, that I am under arrest.”

Campion imported a threat into his voice:

“I gave you,” he said, “an order. To perform a
duty!”

The terrific force of the command from above to
below took Tietjens staggering through the door. He
heard the general’s voice say: “I’m perfectly aware
he’s not drunk.” When he had gone four paces, Col¬
onel Levin was beside him.

Levin was supporting him by the elbow. He whis¬
pered:

“The general wishes me to go with you if you are
feeling unwell. You understand you are released
from arrest!” He exclaimed with a sort of rapture:
“You’re doing splendidly. . . . It’s amazing. Every¬
thing I’ve ever told him about you. . . . Yours is the
only draft that got off this morning. . . .”

Tietjens grunted:

“Of course I understand that if I’m given an order
to perform a duty, it means I am released from arrest.”
He had next to no voice. He managed to say that
he would prefer to go alone. He said: “. . . He’s
forced my hand. . . . The last thing I want is to be
released from arrest. . . .”

Levin said breathlessly:

“You can’t refuse. . . . You can’t upset him. . . .
Why, you can’t. . . . Besides, an officer cannot de¬
mand a court martial.”

“You look,” Tietjens said, “like a slightly faded
bunch of wallflowers. . . . I’m sure I beg your par¬
don. ... It came into my head!” The colonel
drooped intangibly, his moustache a little ragged, his
eyes a little rimmed, his shaving a little ridged. He
exclaimed:

S\ CO {MORE PARADES 231

“Damn it! ... Do you suppose I don’t care what
happens to you? . . . O’Hara came storming into my
quarters at half-past three. . . . I’m not going to tell
you what he said. . . .” Tietjens said gruffly:

“No, don’t! I’ve all I can stand for the mo¬
ment. . . .”

Levin exclaimed desperately:

“I want you to understand. . . . It’s impossible to
believe anything against . . .”

Tietjens faced him, his teeth showing like a badger’s.
He said:

“Whom? . . . Against whom? Curse you!”

Levin said pallidly:

“Against . . . Against . . . either of you. . . .”

“Then leave it at that!” Tietjens said. He stag¬
gered a little until he reached the main lines. Then
he marched. It was purgatory. They peeped at him
from the corners of huts and withdrew. . . . But
they always did peep at him from the corners of huts
and withdraw! That is the habit of the Other Ranks
on perceiving officers. The fellow called McKechnie
also looked out of a hut door. He too withdrew. . . .
There was no mistaking that! He had the news. . . .
On the other hand, McKechnie too was under a cloud.
It might be his, Tietjens’, duty, to strafe McKechnie
to hell for having left camp last night. So he might
be avoiding him. . . . There was no knowing. . . .
He lurched infinitesimally to the right. The road was
rough. His legs felt like detached and swollen ob¬
jects that he dragged after him. He must master his
legs. He mastered his legs. A batman carrying a cup
of tea ran against him. Tietjens said: “Put that down
and fetch me the sergeant-cook at the double. Tell
him the general’s going round the cook-houses in a

232

D£0 Of ORE PARADES

quarter of an hour.” The batman ran, spilling the
tea in the sunlight.

In his hut, which was dim and profusely decorated
with the doctor’s ideals of female beauty in every
known form of pictorial reproduction, so that it might
have been lined with peach-blossom, Tietjens had the
greatest difficulty in getting into his belt. He had at
first forgotten to remove his hat, then he put his head
through the wrong opening; his fingers on the buckles
operated like sausages. He inspected himself in the
doctor’s cracked shaving-glass: he was exceptionally
well shaved.

He had shaved that morning at six-thirty: five
minutes after the draft had got off. Naturally, the
lorries had been an hour late. It was providential
that he had shaved with extra care. An insolently
calm man was looking at him, the face divided in two
by the crack in the glass: a naturally white-com-
plexioned double-half of a face: a patch of high colour
on each cheekbone; the pepper-and-salt hair ruffled,
the white streaks extremely silver. He had gone very
silver lately. But he swore he did not look worn. Not
careworn. McKechnie said from behind his back:

“By Jove, what’s this all about. The general’s been
strafing me to hell for not having my table tidy!”

Tietjens, still looking in the glass, said:

“You should keep your table tidy. It’s the only
strafe the battalion’s had.”

The general, then, must have been in the orderly
room of which he had put McKechnie in charge. Mc¬
Kechnie went on, breathlessly:

“They say you knocked the general. . .

Tietjens said:

“Don’t you know enough to discount what they say

233

DCO {MORE PARADES

in this town?” He said to himself: “That was all
right!” He had spoken with a cool edge on a con¬
temptuous voice.

He said to the sergeant-cook who was panting —
another heavy, grey-moustached, very senior N.C.O.:

“The general’s going round the cook-houses. . . .
You be damn certain there’s no dirty cook’s clothing in
the lockers!” He was fairly sure that otherwise his
cook-houses would be all right. He had gone round
them himself the morning of the day before yesterday.
Or was it yesterday? . . .

It was the day after he had been up all night be¬
cause the draft had been countermanded. ... It
didn’t matter. He said:

“I wouldn’t serve out white clothing to the cooks.
... I bet you’ve got some hidden away, though it’s
against orders.”

The sergeant looked away into the distance, smiled
all-knowingly over his walrus moustache.

“The general likes to see ’em in white,” he said,
“and he won’t know the white clothing has been coun¬
termanded.”

Tietjens said:

“The snag is that the beastly cooks always will tuck
some piece of beastly dirty clothing away in a locker
rather than take the trouble to take it round to their
quarters when they’ve changed.”

Levin said with great distinctness:

“The general has sent me to you with this, Tietjens.
Take a sniff of it if you’re feeling dicky. You’ve been
up all night on end two nights running.” He extended
in the palm of his hand a bottle of smelling-salts in a
silver section of tubing. He said the general suffered

234 tN?0 ZMORE PARADES

from vertigo now and then. Really he himself carried
that restorative for the benefit of Miss de Bailly.

Tietjens asked himself why the devil the sight of
that smelling-salts container reminded him of the brass
handle of the bedroom door moving almost imper¬
ceptibly . . . and incredibly. It was, of course, be¬
cause Sylvia had on her illuminated dressing-table,
reflected by the glass, just such another smooth, silver
segment of tubing. . . . Was everything he saw going
to remind him of the minute movement of that handle?

“You can do what you please,” the sergeant-cook
said, “but there will always be one piece of clothing
in a locker for a G.O.C.I.C.’s inspection. And the
general always walks straight up to that locker and
has it opened. I’ve seen General Campion do it three
times.”

“If there’s any found this time, the man it belongs
to goes for a D.C.M.,” Tietjens said. “See that there’s
a clean diet-sheet on the messing board.”

“The generals really like to find dirty clothing,” the
sergeant-cook said; “it gives them something to talk
about if they don’t know anything else about cook¬
houses. . . . I’ll put up my own diet-sheet, sir. . . .
I suppose you can keep the general back for twenty
minutes or so? It’s all I ask.”

Levin said towards his rolling, departing back:

“That’s a damn smart man. Fancy being as confi¬
dent as that about an inspection. . . . Ugh! . . .”
and Levin shuddered in remembrance of inspections
through which in his time he had passed.

“He’s a damn smart man! ” Tietjens said. He added
to McKechnie:

“You might take a look at dinners in case the gen¬
eral takes it into his head to go round them.”

{MORE PARADES 235

McKechnie said darkly:

“Look here, Tietjens, are you in command of this
unit or am I?”

Levin exclaimed sharply, for him:

“What’s that? What the . .

Tietjens said:

“Captain McKechnie complains that he is the senior
officer and should command this unit.”

Levin ejaculated:

“Of all the . . He addressed McKechnie with
vigour: “My man, the command of these units is an
appointment at disposition of headquarters. Don’t let
there be any mistake about that ! ”

McKechnie said doggedly:

“Captain Tietjens asked me to take the battalion this
morning. I understood he was under . .

“You,” Levin said, “are attached to this unit for
discipline and rations. You damn well understand that
if some uncle or other of yours were not, to the gen¬
eral’s knowledge, a protege of Captain Tietjens’, you’d
be in a lunatic asylum at this moment. . .

McKechnie’s face worked convulsively, he swallowed
as men are said to swallow who suffer from hydro¬
phobia. He lifted his fist and cried out:

“My un . . .”

Levin said:

“If you say another word you go under medical
care the moment it’s said. I’ve the order in my pocket.
Now, fall out. At the double!”

McKechnie wavered on the way to the door. Levin
added:

“You can take your choice of going up the line to¬
night. Or a court of inquiry for obtaining divorce
leave and then not getting a divorce. Or the other

236 cMORE PARADES

thing. And you can thank Captain Tietjens for the
clemency the general has shown you!”

The hut now reeling a little, Tietjens put the opened
smelling bottle to his nostrils. At the sharp pang of
the odour the hut came to attention. He said:

“We can’t keep the general waiting.”

“He told me,” Levin said, “to give you ten minutes.
He’s sitting in your hut. He’s tired. This affair has
worried him dreadfully. O’Hara is the first C.O. he
ever served under. A useful man, too, at his job.”

Tietjens leaned against his dressing-table of meat-
cases.

“You told that fellow McKechnie off, all right,”
he said. “I did not know you had it in you. . . .”

“Oh,” Levin said, “it’s just being with him. ... I
get his manner and it does all right. ... Of course I
don’t often hear him have to strafe anybody in that
manner. There’s nobody really to stand up to him.
Naturally. . . . But just this morning I was in his
cabinet doing private secretary, and he was talking
to Pe . . . Talking while he shaved. And he said
exactly that: You can take your choice of going up
the line to-night or a court martial! ... So naturally
I said as near the same as I could to your little
friend. . . .”

Tietjens said:

“We’d better go now.”

In the winter sunlight Levin tucked his arm under
Tietjens’, leaning towards him gaily and not hurrying.
The display was insufferable to Tietjens, but he recog¬
nized that it was indispensable. The bright day
seemed full of things with hard edges — a rather cruel
definiteness. . . . Liver! . . .

The little depot adjutant passed them going very

237

{MORE PARADES

fast, as if before a wind. Levin just waved his hand
in acknowledgment of his salute and went on, being
enraptured in Tietjens’ conversation. He said:

“You and . . . and Mrs. Tietjens are dining at the
general’s to-night. To meet the G.O.C.I.C. Western
Division. And General O’Hara. . . . We understand
that you have definitely separated from Mrs. Tietjens.
. . .” Tietjens forced his left arm to violence to re¬
strain it from tearing itself from the colonel’s grasp.

His mind had become a coffin-headed, leather-jawed
charger, like Schomburg. Sitting on his mind was like
sitting on Schomburg at a dull water-jump. His lips
said: “Bub-bub-bub-bub!” He could not feel his
hands. He said:

“I recognize the necessity. If the general sees it in
that way. I saw it in another way myself.” His voice
was intensely weary. “No doubt,” he said, “the gen¬
eral knows best!”

Levin’s face exhibited real enthusiasm. He said:

“You decent fellow! You awfully decent fellow!
We’re all in the same boat. . . . Now, will you tell
me? For him. Was O’Hara drunk last night or wasn’t
he?”

Tietjens said:

“I think he was not drunk when he burst into the
room with Major Perowne. . . . I’ve been thinking
about it! I think he became drunk. . . . When I first
requested and then ordered him to leave the room he
leant against the doorpost. ... He was certainly then
— in disorder! . . . I then told him that I should order
him under arrest, if he didn’t go. . . .”

Levin said:

“Mm! Mm! Mm!”

Tietjens said:

238

5^0 MORE PARADES

“It was my obvious duty. ... I assure you that I
was perfectly collected. ... I beg to assure you that
I was perfectly collected. . . .”

Levin said: “I am not questioning the correctness.
. . . But ... we are all one family. ... I admit the
atrocious . . . the unbearable nature. . . . But you
understand that O’Hara had the right to enter your
room. ... As P.M.! . . .”

Tietjens said:

“I am not questioning that it was his right. I was
assuring you that I was perfectly collected because
the general had honoured me by asking my opinion
on the condition of General O’Hara. . . .”

They had by now walked far beyond the line lead¬
ing to Tietjens’ office and, close together, were look¬
ing down upon the great tapestry of the French
landscape.

“He,” Levin said, “is anxious for your opinion. It
really amounts to as to whether O’Hara drinks too
much to continue in his job! . . . And he says he will
take your word. ... You could not have a greater
testimonial. . . .”

“He could not,” Tietjens said studiedly, “do any¬
thing less. Knowing me.”

Levin said:

“Good heavens, old man, you rub it in!” He added
quickly: “He wishes me to dispose of this side of the
matter. He will take my word and yours. You will
forgive . . .”

The mind of Tietjens had completely failed: the
Seine below looked like an S on fire in an opal. He
said: “Eh?” And then: “Oh, yes! I forgive. . . .
It’s painful. . . . You probably don’t know what you
are doing.”

239

(MORE PARADES

He broke off suddenly:

“By God! . . . Were the Canadian Railway Serv¬
ice to go with my draft? They were detailed to mend
the line here to-day. Also to go ... I kept them
back. . . . Both orders were dated the same day and
hour. I could not get on to headquarters either from
the hotel or from here. . .

Levin said:

“Yes, that’s all right. He’ll be immensely pleased.
He’s going to speak to you about that!” Tietjens gave
an immense sigh of relief.

“I remembered that my orders were conflicting just
before. ... It was a terrible shock to remember. . . .
If I sent them up in the lorries, the repairs to the rail¬
way might be delayed. ... If I didn’t, you might get
strafed to hell. ... It was an intolerable worry. . . .”

Levin said:

“You remember it just as you saw the handle of
your door moving. . . .”

Tietjens said from a sort of a mist:

“Yes. You know how beastly it is when you sud¬
denly remember you have forgotten something in or¬
ders. As if the pit of your stomach had . . .”

Levin said:

“All I ever thought about if I’d forgotten anything
was what would be a good excuse to put up to the
adjutant. . . . When I was a regimental officer . . .”

Suddenly Tietjens said insistently:

“How did you know that? . . . About the door
handle? Sylvia could not have seen it. . . .” He
added: “And she could not have known what I was
thinking. . . . She had her back to the door. . . .
And to me. . . . Looking at me in the glass. . . . She

240 WO cMORE PARADES

was not even aware of what had happened. ... So
she could not have seen the handle move!”

Levin hesitated:

“I . . he said. “Perhaps I ought not to have
said that. . . . You’ve told us. . . . That is to say,
you’ve told . . .” He was pale in the sunlight. He
said: “Old man . . . Perhaps you don’t know. . . .
Didn’t you perhaps ever, in your childhood? . . .”

Tietjens said:

“Well . . . what is it?”

“That you talk . . . when you’re sleeping!” Levin
said.

Astonishingly, Tietjens said:

“What of that? . . . It’s nothing to write home
about! With the overwork I’ve had and the sleep-
lessness. . . .”

Levin said, with a pathetic appeal to Tietjens’ om¬
niscience:

“But doesn’t it mean . . . We used to say when we
were boys . . . that if you talk in your sleep . . .
you’re ... in fact a bit dotty?”

Tietjens said without passion:

“Not necessarily. It means that one has been under
mental pressure, but all mental pressure does not drive
you over the edge. Not by any means. . . . Besides,
what does it matter?”

Levin said:

“You mean you don’t care. . . . Good God!” He
remained looking at the view, drooping, in intense de¬
jection. He said: “This beastly war! This beastly
war! . . . Look at all that view. . . .”

Tietjens said:

“It’s an encouraging spectacle, really. The beastli¬
ness of human nature is always pretty normal. We

<^0 {MORE PARADES 241

lie and betray and are wanting in imagination and
deceive ourselves, always, at about the same rate. In
peace and in war! But, somewhere in that view there
are enormous bodies of men. ... If you got a still
more extended range of view over this whole front
you’d have still more enormous bodies of men. . . .
Seven to ten million. . . . All moving towards places
towards which they desperately don’t want to go.
Desperately! Every one of them is desperately afraid.
But they go on. An immense blind will forces them
in the effort to consummate the one decent action that
humanity has to its credit in the whole of recorded
history. The one we are engaged in. That effort is
the one certain creditable fact in all their lives. . . .
But the other lives of all those men are dirty, potty
and discreditable little affairs. . . . Like yours. . . .
Like mine. . . .”

Levin exclaimed:

“Just heavens! What a pessimist you are!”

Tietjens said: “Can’t you see that that is op¬
timism?”

“But,” Levin said, “we’re being beaten out of the
field. . . . You don’t know how desperate things are.”

Tietjens said:

“Oh, I know pretty well. As soon as this weather
really breaks we’re probably done.”

“We can’t.” Levin said, “possibly hold them. Not
possibly.”

“But success or failure,” Tietjens said, “have noth¬
ing to do with the credit of a story. And a considera¬
tion of the virtues of humanity does not omit the other
side. If we lose they win. If success is necessary
to your idea of virtue — virtus — they then provide the
success instead of ourselves. But the thing is to be able

242 5^0 {MORE PARADES

to stick to the integrity of your character, whatever
earthquake sets the house tumbling over your head.
. . . That, thank God, we’re doing. . . .”

Levin said:

“I don’t know. ... If you knew what is going on
at home . . .”

Tietjens said:

“Oh, I know. ... I know that ground as I know
the palm of my hand. I could invent that life if I
knew nothing at all about the facts.”

Levin said:

“I believe you could.” He added: “Of course you
could. . . . And yet the only use we can make of you
is to martyrize you because two drunken brutes break
into your wife’s bedroom. . . .”

Tietjens said

“You betray your non-Anglo-Saxon origin by being
so vocal. . . . And by your illuminative exagger¬
ations!”

Levin suddenly exclaimed:

“What the devil were we talking about?”

Tietjens said grimly:

“I am here at the disposal of the competent military
authority— You! — that is inquiring into my antece¬
dents. I am ready to go on belching platitudes till
you stop me.”

Levin answered:

“For goodness’ sake help me. This is horribly pain¬
ful. He — the general — has given me the job of find¬
ing out what happened last night. He won’t face it
himself. He’s attached to you both.”

Tietjens said

“It’s asking too much to ask me to help you. . . .

<^0 mORE PARADES 243

What did I say in my sleep? What has Mrs. Tietjens
told the general?”

“The general,” Levin said, “has not seen Mrs. Tiet¬
jens. He could not trust himself. He knew she would
twist him round her little finger.”

Tietjens said:

“He’s beginning to learn. He was sixty last July,
but he’s beginning.”

“So that,” Levin said, “what we do know we learnt
in the way I have told you. And from O’Hara of
course. The general would not let Pe . . ., the other
fellow, speak a word, while he was shaving. He just
said: T won’t hear you. I won’t hear you. You
can take your choice of going up the line as soon as
there are trains running or being broke on my personal
application to the King in Council.”

“I didn’t know,” Tietjens said, “that he could talk
as straight as that.”

“He’s dreadfully hard hit,” Levin answered; “if you
and Mrs. Tietjens separate — and still more if there’s
anything real against either of you — it’s going to shat¬
ter all his illusions. And . . .” He paused: “Do you
know Major Thurston? A gunner? Attached to our
anti-aircraft crowd? . . . The general is very thick
with him. . . .”

Tietjens said:

“He’s one of the Thurstons of Lobden Moorside.
. . . I don’t know him personally. . . .”

Levin said:

“He’s upset the general a good deal. . . . With
something he told him. . . .”

Tietjens said:

“Good God!” And then: “He can’t have told the

244 tA CO £MORE PARADES

general anything against me. . . . Then it must be
against . .

Levin said:

“Do you want the general always to be told things
against you in contradistinction to things about . . .
another person.”

Tietjens said:

“We shall be keeping the fellows in my cook-house
a confoundedly long time waiting for inspections. . . .
I’m in your hands as regards the general. . . .”

Levin said:

“The general’s in your hut: thankful to goodness
to be alone. He never is. He said he was going to
write a private memorandum for the Secretary of
State, and I could keep you any time I liked as long
as I got everything out of you. . . .”

Tietjens said:

“Did what Major Thurston allege take place . . .
Thurston has lived most of his life in France. . . .
But you had better not tell me. . .

Levin said:

“He’s our anti-craft liaison officer with the French
civilian authorities. Those sort of fellows generally
have lived in France a good deal. A very decentish,
quiet man. He plays chess with the general and they
talk over the chess. . . . But the general is going to
talk about what he said to you himself. . .

Tietjens said:

“Good God! ... He going to talk as well as you.
. . . You’d say the coils were closing in. . . .”

Levin said:

“We can’t go on like this. . . . It’s my own fault
for not being more direct. But this can’t last all day.

{MORE PARADES 245

We could neither of us stand it. . . . I’m pretty nearly
done. . .

Tietjens said:

“Where did your father come from, really? Not
from Frankfurt? . .

Levin said:

“Constantinople. . . . His father was financial
agent to the Sultan; my father was his son by an Arme¬
nian presented to him by the Selamlik along with the
Order of the Medjidje, first class.”

“It accounts for your very decent manner, and for
your common sense. If you had been English I should
have broken your neck before now.”

Levin said:

“Thank you! I hope I always behave like an Eng¬
lish gentleman. But I am going to be brutally direct
now. . . .” He went on: “The really queer thing
is that you should always address Miss Wannop in the
language of the Victorian Correct Letter -Writer. You
must excuse my mentioning the name: it shortens
things. You said ‘Miss Wannop’ every two or three
half-minutes. It convinced the general more than any
possible assertions that your relations were perfectly
• • •

Tietjens, his eyes shut, said:

“I talked to Miss Wannop in my sleep. . .

Levin, who was shaking a little, said:

“It was very queer. . . . Almost ghostlike. . . „
There you sat, your arms on the table. Talking away.
You appeared to be writing a letter to her. And the
sunlight streaming in at the hut. I was going to wake
you, but he stopped me. He took the view that he was
on detective work, and that he might as well detect.
He had got it into his mind that you were a Socialist.”

246 3£0 MORE PARADES

“He would/’ Tietjens commented. “Didn’t I tell
you he was beginning to learn things? . .

Levin exclaimed:

“But you aren’t a So . .

Tietjens said:

“Of course, if your father came from Constantinople
and his mother was a Georgian, it accounts for your
attractiveness. You are a most handsome fellow.
And intelligent. ... If the general has put you on to
inquire whether I am a Socialist I will answer your
questions.”

Levin said:

“No. . . . That’s one of the questions he’s reserving
for himself to ask. It appears that if you answer that
you are a Socialist he intends to cut you out of his
will. . . .”

Tietjens said:

“His will! . . . Oh, yes, of course, he might very
well leave me something. But doesn’t that supply
rather a motive for me to say that I am? I don’t want
his money.”

Levin positively jumped a step backwards. Money,
and particularly money that came by way of inherit¬
ance, being one of the sacred things of life for him, he
exclaimed :

“I don’t see that you can joke about such a sub¬
ject!”

Tietjens answered good-humouredly:

“Well, you don’t expect me to play up to the old
gentleman in order to get his poor old shekels.” He
added “Hadn’t we better get it over?”

Levin said:

“You’ve got hold of yourself?”

Tietjens answered:

3\C0 {MORE PARADES 247

“Pretty well. . . . You’ll excuse my having been
emotional so far. You aren’t English, so it won’t have
embarrassed you.”

Levin exclaimed in an outraged manner:

“Hang it, I’m English to the backbone! What’s the
matter with me?”

Tietjens said:

“Nothing. . . . Nothing in the world. That’s just
what makes you un-English. We’re all . . . well, it
doesn’t matter what’s wrong with us. . . . What did
you gather about my relations with Miss Wannop?”

The question was so unemotionally put and Levin
was still so concerned as to his origins that he did
not at first grasp what Tietjens had said. He began to
protest that he had been educated at Winchester and
Magdalen. Then he exclaimed, “Oh!” And took time
for reflection.

“If,” he said finally, “the general had not let out
that she was young and attractive ... at least, I sup¬
pose attractive ... I should have thought that you
regarded her as an old maid. ... You know, of
course, that it came to me as a shock, the thought that
there was anyone. . . . That you had allowed your¬
self . . . Anyhow ... I suppose I’m simple. . . .”

Tietjens said:

“What did the general gather?”

“He . . .” Levin said, “he stood over you with his
head held to one side, looking rather cunning . . . like
a magpie listening at a hole it’s dropped a nut into.
. . . First he looked disappointed: then quite glad. A
simple kind of gladness. Just glad, you know. . . .
When we got outside the hut he said ‘I suppose in vino
veritas’ and then he asked me the Latin for ‘sleep’
. . . But I had forgotten it too. . . .”

248

ZM0RE PARADES

Tietjens said:

“What did I say?”

“It’s . . Levin hesitated, “extraordinarily diffi¬
cult to say what you did say. ... I don’t profess to
remember long speeches to the letter. . . . Naturally
it was a good deal broken up. ... I tell you, you
were talking to a young lady about matters you don’t
generally talk to young ladies about. . . . And ob¬
viously you were trying to let your . . . Mrs. Tiet¬
jens, down easily. . . .You were trying to explain
also why you had definitely decided to separate from
Mrs. Tietjens. . . . And you took it that the young
lady might be troubled ... at the separation. ...”

Tietjens said carelessly:

“This is rather painful. Perhaps you would let me
tell you exactly what did happen last night. . . .”

Levin said

“If you only would!” He added rather diffidently:
“If you would not mind remembering that I am a mili¬
tary court of inquiry. It makes it easier for me to
report to the general if you say things dully and in
the order they happened.”

Tietjens said:

“Thank you . . .” and after a short interval, “I re¬
tired to rest with my wife last night at. ... I cannot
say the hour exactly. Say half-past one. I reached
this camp at half-past four, taking rather over half
an hour to walk. What happened, as I am about to
relate, took place therefore before four.”

“The hour,” Levin said, “is not material. We know
the incident occurred in the small hours. General
O’Hara made his complaint to me at three-thirty-five.
He probably took five minutes to reach my quarters.”

Tietjens asked:

MORE PARADES 249

“The exact charge was . . .”

“The complaints,” Levin answered, “were very
numerous indeed. ... I could not catch them all.
The succinct charge was at first being drunk and
striking a superior officer, then merely that of conduct
prejudicial in that you struck . . . There is also a sub¬
sidiary charge of conduct prejudicial in that you im¬
properly marked a charge-sheet in your orderly room.
. . . I did not catch what all that was about. ... You
appear to have had a quarrel with him about his red¬
caps. . . .”

“That,” Tietjens said, “is what it is really all about.”
He asked: “The officer I was said to have struck
was . . .?”

Levin said:

“Perowne . . .” dryly.

Tietjens said:

“You are sure it was not himself. I am prepared to
plead guilty to striking General O’Hara.”

“It is not,” Levin said, “a question of pleading
guilty. There is no charge to that effect against you,
and you are perfectly aware that you are not under
arrest. ... An order to perform any duty after you
have been placed under arrest in itself releases you
and dissolves the arrest.”

Tietjens said coolly:

“I am perfectly aware of that. And that that was
General Campion’s intention in ordering me to accom¬
pany him round my cook-houses. . . . But I doubt.
... I put it to you for your serious attention whether
that is the best way to hush this matter up. ... I
think it would be more expedient that I should plead
guilty to a charge of striking General O’Hara. And
naturally to being drunk. An officer does not strike a

250 IKO £MORE PARADES

general when he is sober. That would be a quite
inconspicuous affair. Subordinate officers are broken
every day for being drunk.”

Levin had said “Wait a minute,” twice. He now
exclaimed with a certain horror:

“Your mania for sacrificing yourself makes you lose
all . . . all sense of proportion. You forget that Gen¬
eral Campion is a gentleman. Things cannot be done
in a hole-and-corner manner in this command. . .

Tietjens said:

“They’re done unbearably. ... It would be noth¬
ing to me to be broke for being drunk, but raking up
all this is hell.”

Levin said:

“The general is anxious to know exactly what has
happened. You will kindly accept an order to relate
exactly what happened.”

Tietjens said:

“That is what is perfectly damnable. . . .” He re¬
mained silent for nearly a minute, Levin slapping his
leggings with his riding-crop in a nervously passionate
rhythm. Tietjens stiffened himself and began:

“General O’Hara came to my wife’s room and
burst in the door. I was there. I took him to be
drunk. But from what he exclaimed I have since
imagined that he was not so much drunk as misled.
There was another man lying in the corridor where I
had thrown him. General O’Hara exclaimed that this
was Major Perowne. I had not realised that this was
Major Perowne. I do not know Major Perowne very
well and he was not in uniform. I had imagined him
to be a French waiter coming to call me to the tele¬
phone. I had seen only his face round the door: he
was looking round the door. My wife was in a state

251

£\C0 {MORE PARADES

. . . bordering on nudity. I had put my hand under
his chin and thrown him through the doorway. I am
physically very strong and I exercised all my strength.
I am aware of that. I was excited, but not more ex¬
cited than the circumstances seemed to call for. . . .”

Levin exclaimed:

“But ... At three in the morning! The tele^
phone!”

“I was ringing up my headquarters and yours. All
through the night. The O.I.C. draft, Lieutenant Cow¬
ley, was also ringing me up. I was anxious to know
what was to be done about the Canadian railway men.
I had three times been called to the telephone since I
had been in Mrs. Tietjens’ room, and once an orderly
had come down from the camp. I was also conducting
a very difficult conversation with my wife as to the dis¬
posal of my family’s estates, which are large, so that
the details were complicated. I occupied the room
next door to Mrs. Tietjens and till that moment, the
communicating door between the rooms being open, I
had heard when a waiter or an orderly had knocked at
my own door in the corridor. The night porter of the
hotel was a dark, untidy, surly sort of fellow. . , .
Not unlike Perowne.”

Levin said:

“Is it necessary to go into all this? We . . A

Tietjens said:

“If I am to make a statement it seems necessary.
I would prefer you to question me . . .”

Levin said:

“Please go on. . . . We accept the statement that
Major Perowne was not in uniform. He states that
he was in his pyjamas and dressing-gown. Looking for
the bathroom.”

252 5\!0 {MORE PARADES

Tietjens said: “Ah'.” and stood reflecting. He
said:

“May I hear the . . . the purport of Major Per-
owne’s statement?”

“He states,” Levin said, “what I have just said.
He was looking for the bathroom. He had not slept
in the hotel before. He opened a door and looked
round it, and was immediately thrown with great vio¬
lence down into the passage with his head against the
wall. He says that this dazed him so that, not really
appreciating what had happened, he shouted various
accusations against the person who had assaulted him.

. . . General O’Hara then came out of his room. . . .”

Tietjens said:

“What accusations did Major Perowne shout?”

“He doesn’t. . . .” Levin hesitated, “eh! . . . elab¬
orate them in his statement.”

Tietjens said:

“It is, I imagine, material that I should know what
they are. . . .”

Levin said:

“I don’t know that. ... If you’ll forgive me . . .
Major Perowne came to see me, reaching me half an
hour after General O’Hara. He was very . . . ex¬
tremely nervous and concerned. I am bound to say
. . . for Mrs. Tietjens. . . . And also very concerned
to spare yourself! ... It appears that he had shouted
out just anything. ... As it might be ‘Thieves!’ or
‘Fire!’ . . . But when General O’Hara came out he
told him, being out of himself, that he had been invited
to your wife’s room, and that . . . Oh, excuse me.

. . . I’m under great obligations to you ... the very
greatest . . . that you had attempted to blackmail
him!”

253

cA CO WIORE PARADES

Tietjens said:

“Well! . .

“You understand,” Levin said, and he was pleading,
“that that is what he said to General O’Hara in the
corridor. He even confessed it was madness. . . .
He did not maintain the accusation to me. . . .”

Tietjens said:

“Not that Mrs. Tietjens had given him leave? . .

Levin said with tears in his eyes:

“I’ll not go on with this. ... I will rather resign
my commission than go on tormenting you. . . .”

“You can’t resign your commission,” Tietjens said.

“I can resign my appointment,” Levin answered. He
went on sniffling: “This beastly war! . . . This
beastly war! . . .”

Tietjens said:

“If what is distressing you is having to tell me that
you believe Major Perowne came with my wife’s per¬
mission I know it’s true. It’s also true that my wife
expected me to be there. She wanted some fun: not
adultery. But I am also aware — as Major Thurston
appears to have told General Campion — that Mrs.
Tietjens was with Major Perowne. In France. At a
place called Yssingueux-les-Pervenches. . . .”

“That wasn’t the name,” Levin blubbered. “It was
Saint . . . Saint . . . Saint something. In the Cev-
ennes. . . .”

Tietjens said:

“Don’t, there! . . . Don’t distress yourself. . . .”

“But I’m . . .” Levin went on, “under great obliga¬
tions to you. . . .”

“I’d better,” Tietjens said, “finish this matter
myself.”

Levin said:

254 3\C0 {MORE PARADES

“It will break the general’s heart. He believes so
absolutely in Mrs, Tietjens. Who wouldn’t? . . .
How the devil could you guess what Major Thurston
told him?”

“He’s the sort of brown, trustworthy man who al¬
ways does know that sort of thing,” Tietjens answered.
“As for the general’s belief in Mrs. Tietjens, he’s per¬
fectly justified. . . . Only there will be no more pa¬
rades. Sooner or later it has to come to that for us
all. . . He added with a little bitterness: “Only
not for you. Being a Turk or a Jew you are a simple,
Oriental, monogamous, faithful soul. . . .” He added
again: “I hope to goodness the sergeant-cook has
the sense not to keep the men’s dinners back for the
general’s inspection. . . . But of course he will
not. . . .”

Levin said:

“What in the world would that matter?” fiercely.
“He keeps men waiting as much as three hours. On
parade.”

“Of course,” Tietjens said, “if that is what Major
Perowne told General O’Hara it removes a good deal
of my suspicions of the latter’s sobriety. Try to get
the position. General O’Hara positively burst in the
little sneck of the door that I had put down and came

in shouting: ‘Where is the - blackmailer?’ And it

was a full three minutes before I could get rid of him.
I had had the presence of mind to switch off the light
and he persisted in asking for another look at Mrs.
Tietjens. You see, if you consider it, he is a very
heavy sleeper. He is suddenly awakened after, no
doubt, not a few pegs. He hears Major Perowne shout¬
ing about blackmail and thieves. ... I dare say this
town has its quota of blackmailers. O’Hara might

iMORE PARADES 255

well be anxious to catch one in the act. He hates
me, anyhow, because of his Red Caps. I’m a shabby-
looking chap he doesn’t know much about. Perowne
passes for being a millionaire. I dare say he is: he’s
said to be very stingy. That would be how he got
hold of the idea of blackmail and hypnotised the gen¬
eral with it. . . . ”

He went on again:

“But I wasn’t to know that. ... I had shut the
door on Perowne and didn’t even know he was Per¬
owne. I really thought he was the night porter coming
to call me to the telephone. I only saw a roaring satyr.
I mean that was what I thought O’Hara was. . . .
And I assure you I kept my head. . . . When he per¬
sisted in leaning against the doorpost and asking for
another look at Mrs. Tietjens, he kept on saying: ‘The
woman’ and ‘The hussy.’ Not ‘Mrs. Tietjens.’ ... I
thought then that there was something queer. I said:
‘This is my wife’s room,’ several times. He said some¬
thing to the effect of how could he know she was my
wife, and . . . that she had made eyes at himself in
the lounge, so it might have been himself as well as
Perowne. ... I dare say he had got it into his head
that I had imported some tart to blackmail someone.

. . . But you know. ... I grew exhausted after a
time. ... I saw outside in the corridor one of the
little subalterns he has on his staff, and I said: ‘If you
do not take General O’Hara away I shall order you to
put him under arrest for drunkenness.’ That seemed
to drive the general crazy. I had gone closer to him,
being determined to push him out of the door, and he
decidedly smelt of whisky. Strongly. . . . But I dare
say he was thinking himself outraged, really. And per¬
haps also coming to his senses. As there was nothing

256 S\ CO {MORE PARADES

else for it I pushed him gently out of the room. In
going he shouted that I was to consider myself under
arrest. I so considered myself. . . . That is to say
that, as soon as I had settled certain details with Mrs.
Tietjens, I walked up to the camp, which I took to be
my quarters, though I am actually under the M.O.’s
orders to reside in this hotel owing to the state of my
lungs. I saw the draft off, that not necessitating my
giving any orders. I went to my sleeping quarters, it
being then about six-thirty, and towards seven awak¬
ened McKechnie, whom I asked to take my adjutant’s
and battalion parade and orderly-room. I had break¬
fast in my hut, and then went into my private office to
await developments. I think I have now told you
everything material. . .

CHAPTER II

General Lord Edward Campion, G.C.B., K.C.
M.G., (military), D.S.O., etc., sat, radiating glory and
composing a confidential memorandum to the Secre¬
tary of State for War, on a bully-beef case, leaning
forward over a military blanket that covered a deal
table. He was for the moment in high good humour on
the surface, though his subordinate minds were puz¬
zled and depressed. At the end of each sentence that
he wrote — and he wrote with increasing satisfaction!
— a mind that he was not using said: “What the
devil am I going to do with that fellow?” Or: “How
the devil is that girl’s name to be kept out of this
mess?”

Having been asked to write a confidential memoran¬
dum for the information of the home authorities as to
what, in his opinion, was the cause of the French rail¬
way strike, he had hit on the ingenious device of re¬
porting what was the opinion of the greater part of
the forces under his command. This was a dangerous
line to take, for he might well come into conflict with
the home Government. But he was pretty certain that
any inquiries that the home Government could cause
to be made amongst the local civilian population would
confirm what he was writing — which he was careful to
state was not to be taken as a communication of his
own opinion. In addition, he did not care what the
Government did to him.

He was satisfied with his military career. In the
early part of the war, after materially helping mobil-

257

258 D£0 {MORE PARADES

isation, he had served with great distinction in the
East, in command mostly of mounted infantry. He
had subsequently so distinguished himself in the or¬
ganising and transporting of troops coming and go¬
ing overseas that, on the part of the lines of communi¬
cation where he now commanded becoming of great
importance, he knew that he had seemed the only
general that could be given that command. It had
become of enormous importance — these were open
secrets! — because, owing to divided opinions in the
Cabinet, it might at any moment be decided to move
the bulk of H.M. Forces to somewhere in the East.
The idea underlying this — as General Campion saw it
— had at least some relation to the necessities of the
British Empire and strategy embracing world politics
as well as military movements — a fact which is often
forgotten — there was this much to be said for it:
The preponderance of British Imperial interests might
be advanced as lying in the Middle and Far Easts —
to the east, that is to say, of Constantinople. This
might be denied, but it was a feasible proposition. The
present operations on the Western front, arduous, and
even creditable, as they might have been until rela¬
tively lately, were very remote from our Far-Eastern
possessions and mitigated from, rather than added to,
our prestige. In addition, the unfortunate display in
front of Constantinople in the beginning of the war had
almost eliminated our prestige with the Mohammedan
races. Thus a demonstration in enormous force in any
region between European Turkey and the north- west-
tern frontiers of India might point out to Moham¬
medans, Hindus, and other Eastern races, what over¬
whelming forces Great Britain, were she so minded,
could put into the field. It is true that that would

259

3\c O (MORE PARADES

mean the certain loss of the war on the Western front,
with corresponding loss of prestige in the West. But
the wiping out of the French republic would convey
little to the Eastern races, whereas we could no doubt
make terms with the enemy nations, as a price for
abandoning our allies that might well leave the Empire,
not only intact, but actually increased in colonial ex¬
tent, since it was unlikely that the enemy empires
would wish to be burdened with colonies for some time.

General Campion was not overpoweringly sentimen¬
tal over the idea of the abandonment of our allies.
They had won his respect as fighting organisations
and that, to the professional soldier, is a great deal;
but still he was a professional soldier, and the prospect
of widening the bounds of the British Empire could not
be contemptuously dismissed at the price of rather
sentimental dishonour. Such bargains had been struck
before during wars involving many nations, and doubt¬
less such bargains would be struck again. In addition,
votes might be gained by the Government from the
small but relatively noisy and menacing part of the
British population that favoured the enemy nations.

But when it came to tactics — which it should be
remembered concerns itself with the movement of
troops actually in contact with enemy forces — General
Campion had no doubt that that plan was the concep¬
tion of the brain of a madman. The dishonour of
such a proceeding must of course be considered — and
its impracticability was hopeless. The dreadful nature
of what would be our debacle did we attempt to eva¬
cuate the Western front might well be unknown to, or
might be deliberately ignored by, the civilian mind.
But the general could almost see the horrors as a
picture — and, professional soldier as he was, his mind

260 MORE PARADES

shuddered at the picture. They had by now in the
country enormous bodies of troops who had hitherto
not come into contact with the enemy forces. Did
they attempt to withdraw these in the first place the
native population would at once turn from a friendly
into a bitterly hostile factor, and moving troops through
hostile country is to the wth power a more lengthy
matter than moving them through territory where the
native populations lend a helping hand, or are at least
not obstructive. They had in addition this enormous
force to ration, and they would doubtless have to sup¬
ply them with ammunition on the almost certain break¬
ing through of the enemy forces. It would be impos¬
sible to do this without the use of the local railways —
and the use of these would at once be prohibited. If,
on the other hand, they attempted to begin the evacua¬
tion by shortening the front, the operation would be
very difficult with troops who, by now, were almost
solely men trained only in trench warfare, with officers
totally unused to that keeping up of communications
between units which is the life and breath of a retreat¬
ing army. Training, in fact, in that element had been
almost abandoned in the training camps where instruc¬
tion was almost limited to bomb-throwing, the use of
machine-guns, and other departments which had been
forced on the War Office by eloquent civilians — to the
almost complete neglect of the rifle. Thus at the mere
hint of a retreat the enemy forces must break through
and come upon the vast, unorganised, or semi-organised
bodies of troops in the rear. . . .

The temptation for the professional soldier was to
regard such a state of things with equanimity. Gen¬
erals have not infrequently enormously distinguished
themselves by holding up retreats from the rear when

&C0 ZM0RE PARADES 261

vanguard commanders have disastrously failed. But
General Campion resisted the temptation of even hop¬
ing that this chance of distinguishing himself might
offer itself. He could not contemplate with equanimity
the slaughter of great bodies of men under his com¬
mand, and not even a successful retreating action of
that description could be carried out without horrible
slaughter. And he would have little hope of conduct¬
ing necessarily delicate and very hurried movements
with an army that, except for its rough training in
trench warfare, was practically civilian in texture. So
that although, naturally, he had made his plans for
such an eventuality, having indeed in his private quar¬
ters four enormous paper-covered blackboards upon
which he had changed daily the names of units accord¬
ing as they passed from his hands or came into them
and became available, he prayed specifically every
night before retiring to bed that the task might not
be cast upon his shoulders. He prized very much his
universal popularity in his command, and he could not
bear to think of how the eyes of the Army would regard
him as he put upon them a strain so appalling and such
unbearable sufferings. He had, moreover, put that as¬
pect of the matter very strongly in a memorandum
that he had prepared in answer to a request from the
home Government for a scheme by which an evacua¬
tion might be effected. But he considered that the
civilian element in the Government was so entirely in¬
different to the sufferings of the men engaged in these
operations, and was so completely ignorant of what are
military exigencies, that the words he had devoted to
that department of the subject were merely wasted.

9 • •

So everything pushed him into writing confidentially

262 WO MORE PARADES

to the Secretary of State for War a communication that
he knew must be singularly distasteful to a number of
the gentlemen who would peruse it. He chuckled in¬
deed as he wrote, the open door behind him and the
sunlight pouring in on his radiant figure. He said:

“Sit down, Tietjens. Levin, I shall not want you
for ten minutes,” without raising his head, and went
on writing. It annoyed him that, from the corner of
his eye, he could see that Tietjens was still standing,

and he said rather irritably: “Sit down, sit down.
))

He wrote:

“It is pretty generally held here by the native pop¬
ulation that the present very serious derangement of
traffic, if not actively promoted, is at least winked at
by the Government of this country. It is, that is to
say, intended to give us a taste of what would happen
if I took any measures here for returning any large
body of men to the home country or elsewhere, and it
is said also to be a demonstration in favour of a single
command — a measure which is here regarded by a
great weight of instructed opinion as indispensable to
the speedy and successful conclusion of hostilities.

The general paused over that sentence. It came
very near the quick. For himself he was absolutely in
favour of a single command, and in his opinion, too,
it was indispensable to any sort of conclusion of hos¬
tilities at all. The whole of military history, in so far
as it concerned allied operations of any sort — from the
campaigns of Xerxes and operations during the wars of
the Greeks and Romans, to the campaigns of Marl¬
borough and Napoleon and the Prussian operations of
1866 and 1870 — pointed to the conclusion that a rela-

WfO ZMORE PARADES 263

tively small force acting homogeneously was, to the
nth power again, more effective than vastly superior
forces of allies acting only imperfectly in accord or
not in accord at all. Modern developments in arms
had made no shade at all of difference to strategy and
had made differences merely of time and numbers to
tactics. To-day, as in the days of the Greek Wars
of the Allies, success depended on apt timing of the
arrival of forces at given points, and it made no dif¬
ference whether your lethal weapons acted from a dis¬
tance of thirty miles or were held and operated by
hand; whether you dealt death from above or below
the surface of the ground, through the air by dropped
missiles or by mephitic and torturing vapours. What
won combats, campaigns, and, in the end, wars, was the
brain which timed the arrival of forces at given points
— and that must be one brain which could command
their presence at these points, not a half-dozen author¬
ities requesting each other to perform operations which
might or might not fall in with the ideas or the prej¬
udices of any one or other of the half-dozen. . . .

Levin came in noiselessly, slid a memorandum slip
on to the blanket beside the paper on which the gen¬
eral was writing. The general read: T. agrees com¬
pletely, sir, with your diagnosis of the facts, except that
he is much more ready to accept General O’H.’s acts as
reasonable. He places himself entirely in your hands.

The general heaved an immense sigh of relief. The
sunlight streaming in became very bright. He had had
a real sinking at the heart when Tietjens had boggled
for a second over putting on his belt. An officer may
not demand or insist on a court martial. But he, Cam¬
pion, could not in decency have refused Tietjens his
court martial if he stood out for it. He had a right

264 (KO (MORE PARADES

to clear his character publicly. It would have been
impossible to refuse him. Then the fat would have
been in the fire. For, knowing O’Hara through pretty
nearly twenty-five years — or it must be thirty! — of
service Campion was pretty certain that O’Hara had
made a drunken beast of himself. Yet he was very
attached to O’Hara — one of the old type of rough-
diamond generals who swore your head off, but were
damn capable men! ... It was a tremendous relief.

He said sharply:

“Sit down, can’t you, Tietjens! You irritate me by
standing there!” He said to himself: “An obstinate
fellow. . . . Why, he’s gone!” and his mind and eyes
being occupied by the sentence he had last written,
the sense of irritation remained with him. He re-read
the closing clause: “. . . a single command — a meas¬
ure which is here regarded by a great weight of in¬
structed opinion as indispensable to the speedy and
successful termination of hostilities. . . .”

He looked at this, whistling beneath his breath. It
was pretty thick. He was not asked for his opinion
as to the single command: yet he decidedly wanted to
get in and was pretty well prepared to stand the con¬
sequences. The consequences might be something
pretty bad: he might be sent home. That was quite
possible. That, even, was better than what was hap¬
pening to poor Puffles, who was being starved of men.
He had been at Sandhurst with Puffles, and they had
got their commissions on the same day to the same
regiment. A damn good soldier, but too hot-tempered.
He was making an extraordinarily good thing of it
in spite of his shortage of men, which was the talk of
the army. But it must be damn agonizing for him, and
a very improper strain on his men. One day — as soon

&£0 {MORE PARADES 265

as the weather broke — the enemy must break through.
Then he, Puffles, would be sent home. That was what
the fellows at Westminster and in Downing Street
wanted. Puffles had been a great deal too free with
his tongue. They would not send him home before he
had a disaster because, unless he were in disgrace, he
would be a thorn in their sides: whereas if he were dis¬
graced no one much would listen to him. It was smart
practice. . . . Sharp practice!

He tossed the sheet on which he had been writing
across the table and said to Tietjens:

“Look at that, will you?” In the centre of the hut
Tietjens was sitting bulkily on a bully-beef case that
had been brought in ceremoniously by a runner. “He
does look beastly shabby,” the general said. “There
are three . . . four grease stains on his tunic. He
ought to get his hair cut!” He added: “It’s a per¬
fectly damnable business. No one but this fellow
would have got into it. He’s a firebrand. That’s what
he is. A regular firebrand!”

Tietjens’ troubles had really shaken the general not
a little. He was left up in the air. He had lived the
greater part of his life with his sister, Lady Claudine
Sandbach, and the greater part of the remainder of his
life at Groby, at any rate after he came home from
India and during the reign of Tietjens’ father. He had
idolized Tietjens’ mother, who was a saint! What
indeed there had been of the idyllic in his life had
really all passed at Groby, if he came to think of it.
India was not so bad, but one had to be young to
enjoy that. . . .

Indeed, only the day before yesterday he had been
thinking that if this letter that he was thinking out
did result in his being sent back, he should propose to

266 £\ CO ZMORE PARADES

stand for the half of the Cleveland Parliamentary Divi¬
sion in which Groby stood. What with the Groby in¬
fluence and his nephew’s in the country districts, though
Castlemaine had not much land left up there, and
with Sandbach’s interest in the ironworking districts,
he would have an admirable chance of getting in. Then
he would make himself a thorn in the side of certain
persons.

He had thought of quartering himself on Groby. It
would have been easy to get Tietjens out of the army
and they could all — he, Tietjens and Sylvia — live to¬
gether. It would have been his ideal of a home and of
an occupation. . . .

For, of course, he was getting old for soldiering:
unless he got a fighting army there was not much more
to it as a career for a man of sixty. If he did get an
army he was pretty certain of a peerage and hefty
political work could still be done in the Lords. He
would have a good claim on India and that meant dying
a Field-Marshal.

On the other hand, the only command that was
at all likely to be going — except for deaths, and the
health rate amongst army commanders was pretty high!
— was poor Puffles’. And that would be no pleasant
command — with the men all hammered to pieces. He
decided to put the whole thing to Tietjens. Tietjens,
like a meal-sack, was looking at him over the draft
of the letter that he had just finished reading. The
general said:

“Well?”

Tietjens said:

“It’s splendid, sir, to see you putting the matter so
strongly. It must be put strongly, or we’re lost.”

The general said:

267

D£0 {MORE PARADES

“You think that?”

Tietjens said:

“I’m sure of it, sir. . . . But unless you are pre¬
pared to throw up your command and take to poli¬
tics. . . ”

The general exclaimed:

“You’re a most extraordinary fellow. . . . That was
exactly what I was thinking about: this very minute.”

“It’s not so extraordinary,” Tietjens said. “A really
active general thinking as you do is very badly needed
in the House. As your brother-in-law is to have a peer¬
age whenever he asks for it, West Cleveland will be
vacant at any moment, and with his influence and Lord
Castlemaine’s — your nephew’s not got much land, but
the name is immensely respected in the country dis¬
tricts. . . . And, of course, using Groby for your head¬
quarters. . .

The general said:

“That’s pretty well botched, isn’t it?”

Tietjens said without moving a muscle:

“Why, no, sir. Sylvia is to have Groby and you
would naturally make it your headquarters. . . .
You’ve still got your hunters there. . .

The general said:

“Sylvia is really to have Groby. . . . Good God!”

Tietjens said:

“So it was no great conjuring trick, sir, to see that
you might not mind. . .

The general said:

“Upon my soul, I’d as soon give up my chance of
heaven ... no, not heaven, but India, as give up
Groby.”

“You’ve got,” Tietjens said, “an admirable chance

268 &C0 l MORE PARADES

of India. . . . The point is: which way? If they
give you the sixteenth section. . . .”

“I hate,” the general said, “to think of waiting for
poor Puffles’ shoes. I was at Sandhurst with
him. . . .”

“It’s a question, sir,” Tietjens said, “of which is the
best way. For the country and yourself. I suppose
if one were a general one would like to have com¬
manded an army on the Western front. . . .”

The general said:

“I don’t know. . . . It’s the logical end of a career.
. . . But I don’t feel that my career is ending. . . .
I’m as sound as a roach. And in ten years’ time what
difference will it make?”

“One would like,” Tietjens said, “to see you doing
it. . .

The general said:

“No one will know whether I commanded a fighting
army or this damned Whiteley’s outfitting store. . . .”

Tietjens said:

“I know that, sir. . . . But the sixteenth section
will desperately need a good man if General Perry is
sent home. And particularly a general who has the
confidence of all ranks. ... It will be a wonderful
position. You will have every man that’s now on the
Western front at your back after the war. It’s a cer¬
tain peerage. . . . It’s certainly a sounder proposition
than that of a free-lance — which is what you’d be — -
in the House of Commons.”

The general said:

“Then what am I to do with my letter? It’s a
damn good letter. I don’t like wasting letters.”

Tietjens said:

“You want it to show through that you back the

<^0 {MORE PARADES 269

single command for all you are worth, yet you don’t
want them to put their finger on your definitely saying
so yourself?”

The general said:

. . That’s it. That’s just what I do want. . .

He added: “I suppose you take my view of the whole
matter. The Government’s pretence of evacuating the
Western front in favour of the Middle East is probably
only a put-up job to frighten our Allies into giving up
the single command. Just as this railway strike is a
counterdemonstration by way of showing what would
happen to us if we did begin to evacuate. . . .”

Tietjens said:

“It looks like that. . . . I’m not, of course, in the
confidence of the Cabinet. I’m not even in contact
with them as I used to be. . . . But I should put it
that the section of the Cabinet that is in favour of the
Eastern expedition is very small. It’s said to be a one-
man party — with hangers-on — but arguing him out of
it has caused all this delay. That’s how I see it.”

The general exclaimed:

“But, good God! . . . How is such a thing possi¬
ble? That man must walk along his corridors with
the blood of a million — I mean it, of a million — men
round his head. He could not stand up under it. . . .
That fellow is prolonging the war indefinitely by delay¬
ing us now. And men being killed all the time! . . .
I can’t. . . .” He stood up and paced, stamping up
and down the hut. . . . “At Bonderstrom,” he said,
“I had half a company wiped out under me. ... By
my own fault, I admit. I had wrong information
. . .” He stopped and said: “Good God! . . . Good
God! . . . I can see it now. . . . And it’s unbearable!
After eighteen years. I was a brigadier then. It was

270 WO WORE PARADES

your own regiment — the Glamorganshires. . . . They
were crowded into a little nullah and shelled to extinc¬
tion. ... I could see it going on and we could not
get on to the Boer guns with ours to stop ’em. . . .
That’s hell,” he said, “that’s the real hell. ... I never
inspected the Glamorganshires after that for the whole
war. I could not bear the thought of facing their eyes.

. . . Buller was the same. . . . Buller was worse than
I. ... He never held up his head again after. . .

Tietjens said:

“If you would not mind, sir, not going on . . .”

The general stamped to a halt in his stride. He
said:

“Eh? . . . What’s that? What’s the matter with
you?”

Tietjens said:

“I had a man killed on me last night. In this very
hut; where I’m sitting is the exact spot. It makes
me . . . It’s a sort of . . . Complex, they call it
now. . . .”

The general exclaimed:

“Good God! I beg your pardon, my dear boy. . . .
I ought not to have ... I have never behaved like
that before another soul in the world. . . . Not to
Buller. . . . Not to Gatacre, and they were my closest
friends. . . . Even after Spion Kop I never. . . .”
He broke off and said: “But those old memories
won’t interest you. . . .” He said: “I’ve such an
absolute belief in your trustworthiness. I know you
won’t betray what you’ve seen. . . . What I’ve just
said. . . .” He paused and tried to adopt the air of
the listening magpie. He said: “I was called Butcher
Campion in South Africa, just as Gatacre was called
Backacher. I don’t want to be called anything else

271

MORE PARADES

because I’ve made an ass of myself before you. . . .
No, damn it all, not an ass. I was immensely attached
to your sainted mother. . . .” He said: “It’s the
proudest tribute any commander of men can have.
. . . To be called Butcher and have your men follow
you in spite of it. It shows confidence, and it gives
you, as commander, confidence! . . . One has to be
prepared to lose men in hundreds at the right minute
in order to avoid losing them in tens of thousands at
the wrong! . . .” He said: “Successful military op¬
erations consist not in taking or retaining positions, but
in taking or retaining them with a minimum sacrifice
of effectives. ... I wish to God you civilians would
get that into your heads. The men have it. They
know that I will use them ruthlessly — but that I will
not waste one life. . . .” He exclaimed: “Damn it,
if I had ever thought I should have such troubles, in
your father’s days . . . !” He said: “Let’s get back
to what we were talking about. . . . My memorandum
to the secretary. . . .” He burst out: “My God!

. . . What can that fellow think when he reads Shake¬
speare’s When all those heads, legs, arms, joined to¬
gether on the Last Day shall . . . How does it run?
Henry V’s address to his soldiers . . . Every subject’s
body is the king’s . . . but every subject’s soul is his
own. ... And there is no king, be his cause ever so
just. . . . My God ! My God ! . . . as can try it out
with all unspotted soldiers. . . . Have you ever
thought of that?”

Alarm overcame Tietjens. The general was cer¬
tainly in disorder. But over what? There was not
time to think. Campion was certainly dreadfully over¬
worked. . . . He exclaimed:

“Sir, hadn’t you better! . .

He said: “If we

272 &C0 {MORE PARADES

could get back to your memorandum ... I am quite
prepared to write a report to the effect of your sentence
as to the French civilian population’s attitude. That
would throw the onus on me. . . .”

The general said agitatedly:

“No! No! . . . You’ve got quite enough on your
back as it is. Your confidential report states that
you are suspected of having too great common interests
with the French. That’s what makes the whole posi¬
tion so impossible. ... I’ll get Thurston to write
something. He’s a good man, Thurston. Reliable.
...” Tietjens shuddered a little. The general went
on astonishingly:

“ ‘But at my back I always hear
Time’s winged chariot hurrying near:

And yonder all before me lie
Deserts of vast eternity!’ . . .

That’s a general’s life in this accursed war. . . . You
think all generals are illiterate fools. But I have spent
a great deal of time in reading, though I never read
anything written later than the seventeenth century.”

Tietjens said:

“I know, sir. . . . You made me read Clarendon’s
History of the Great Rebellion when I was twelve.”

The general said:

“In case we ... I shouldn’t like ... In short
. . .” He swallowed: it was singular to see him
swallow. He was lamentably thin when you looked
at the man and not the uniform.

Tietjens thought:

“What’s he nervous about? He’s been nervous all
the morning.”

The general said:

“I am trying to say — it’s not much in my line —

£^0 ZMORE PARADES 273

that in case we never met again, I do not wish you
to think me an ignoramus.”

Tietjens thought:

“He’s not ill . . . and he can’t think me so ill that
I’m likely to die. ... A fellow like that doesn’t really
know how to express himself. He’s trying to be kind
and he doesn’t know how to. . . .”

The general had paused. He began to say:

“But there are finer things in Marvell than
that. . . .”

Tietjens thought:

“He’s trying to gain time. . . . Why on earth should
he? . . . What is this all about?” His mind slipped a
notch. The general was looking at his finger-nails
on the blanket. He said:

“There’s, for instance:

“ ‘The grave’s a fine and secret place
But none I think do there embrace. . .

At those words it came to Tietjens suddenly to think
of Sylvia, with the merest film of clothing on her long,
shining limbs. . . . She was working a powder-puff
under her armpits in a brilliant illumination from two
electric lights, one on each side of her dressing-table.
She was looking at him in the glass with the corners
of her lips just moving. A little curled. . . . He said
to himself:

“One is going to that fine and secret place. . . .
Why not have?” She had emanated a perfume
founded on sandalwood. As she worked her swans-
down powder-puff over those intimate regions he could
hear her humming. Maliciously! It was then that
he had observed the handle of the door moving min¬
utely. She had incredible arms, stretched out amongst

274

{^0 {MORE PARADES

a wilderness of besilvered cosmetics. Extraordinarily
lascivious! Yet clean! Her gilded sheath gown was
about her hips on the chair. . . .

Well! She had pulled the strings of one too many
shower-baths !

Shining; radiating glory but still shrivelled so that
he reminded Tietjens of an old apple inside a damas¬
cened helmet; the general had seated himself once
more on the bully-beef case before the blanketed table.
He fingered his very large, golden fountain-pen. He
said:

“Captain Tietjens, I should be glad of your careful
attention ! ”

Tietjens said:

“Sir!” His heart stopped.

The general said that that afternoon Tietjens would
receive a movement order. He said stiffly that he
must not regard this new movement order as a dis¬
grace. It was promotion. He, Major-General Cam¬
pion, was requesting the colonel commanding the depot
to inscribe the highest possible testimonial in his, Tiet¬
jens’, small-book. He, Tietjens, had exhibited the
most extraordinary talent for finding solutions for dif¬
ficult problems. — The colonel was to write that! — In
addition he, General Campion, was requesting his
friend, General Perry, commanding the sixteenth sec¬
tion . . .

Tietjens thought:

“Good God. I am being sent up the line. He’s
sending me to Perry’s Army. . . . That’s certain
death!”

... To give Tietjens the appointment of second in
command of the Vlth Battalion of his regiment!

D£0 {MORE PARADES 275

Tietjens said, but he did not know where the words
came from:

“Colonel Partridge will not like that. He’s praying
for McKechnie to come back!”

To himself he said:

“I shall fight this monstrous treatment of myself to
my last breath.”

The general suddenly called out:

“There you are. . . . There is another of your in¬
fernal worries. . . .”

He put a strong check on himself, and, dryly, like
the very great speaking to the very unimportant,
asked:

“What’s your medical category.”

Tietjens said:

“Permanent base, sir. My chest’s rotten!”

The general said:

“I should forget that, if I were you. . . . The sec¬
ond in command of a battalion has nothing to do but
sit about in arm-chairs waiting for the colonel to be
killed.” He added: “It’s the best I can do for you.
. . . I’ve thought it out very carefully. It’s the best
I can do for you.”

Tietjens said:

“I shall, of course, forget my category, sir. . .

Of course he would never fight any treatment of
himself! . . .

There it was then: the natural catastrophe! As
when, under thunder, a dam breaks. His mind was
battling with the waters. What would it pick out as
the main terror? The mud: the noise: dread always
at the back of the mind? Or the worry! The worry!
Your eyebrows always had a slight tension on them.
. . . Like eye-strain!

276 ZKO ZMORE PARADES

The general had begun, soberly:

“You will recognize that there is nothing else that
I can do.”

His answering:

“I recognize, naturally, sir, that there is nothing else
that you can do . . seemed rather to irritate the
general. He wanted opposition: he wanted Tietjens to
argue the matter. He was the Roman father counsel¬
ling suicide to his son: but he wanted Tietjens to ex¬
postulate. So that he, General Campion, might abso¬
lutely prove that he, Tietjens, was a disgraceful indiv¬
idual. ... It could not be done. Tietjens was not
going to give him the opportunity. The general said:

“You will understand that I can’t — no commander
could! — have such things happening in my com¬
mand. . . .”

Tietjens said:

“I must accept that, if you say it, sir.”

The general looked at him under his eyebrows. He
said:

“I have already told you that this is promotion. I
have been much impressed by the way you have han¬
dled this command. You are, of course, no soldier, but
you will make an admirable officer for the militia, that
is all that our troops now are. . . .” He said: “I
will emphasize what I am saying. ... No officer
could — without being militarily in the wrong — have a
private life that is as incomprehensible and embarrass¬
ing as yours. . . .”

Tietjens said:

“He’s hit it! . . .”

The general said:

“An officer’s private life and his life on parade are
as strategy to tactics. ... I don’t want, if I can avoid

WO MORE PARADES 111

it, to go into your private affairs. It’s extremely em¬
barrassing. . . . But let me put it to you that ... I
wish to be delicate. But you are a man of the world!
. . . Your wife is an extremely beautiful woman. . . .
There has been a scandal ... I admit not of your
making. . . . But if, on the top of that, I appeared to
show favouritism to you . . .”

Tietjens said:

“You need not go on, sir. ... I understand. . . .”
He tried to remember what the brooding and odious
McKechnie had said . . . only two nights ago. . . .
He couldn’t remember. ... It was certainly a sugges¬
tion that Sylvia was the general’s mistress. It had
then, he remembered, seemed fantastic. . . . Well,
what else could they think? He said to himself: “It
absolutely blocks out my staying here!” He said
aloud: “Of course, it’s my own fault. If a man so
handles his womenfolk that they get out of hand, he
has only himself to blame.”

The general was going on. He pointed out that one
of his predecessors had lost that very command on ac¬
count of scandals about women. He had turned the
place into a damned harem ! . . .

He burst out, looking at Tietjens with a peculiar
goggle-eyed intentness:

“If you think I’d care about losing my command
over Sylvia or any other damned Society woman. . . .”
He said: “I beg your pardon . . .” and continued
reasoningly:

“It’s the men that have to be considered. They
think — and they’ve every right to think it if they wish
to — that a man who’s a wrong ’un over women isn’t
the man they can trust their lives in the hands of. . . .”
He added: “And they’re probably right. ... A man

278

^ O ZMORE PARADES

who’s a real wrong ’un. ... I don’t mean who sets up
a gal in a tea-shop. . . . But one who sells his wife,
or ... At any rate, in our army. . . . The French
may be different! . . . Well, a man like that usually
has a yellow streak when it comes to fighting. . . .
Mind, I’m not saying always. . . . Usually. . . .
There was a fellow called . .

He went off into an anecdote. . . *

Tietjens recognized the pathos of his trying to get
away from the agonizing present moment, back to an
India where it was all real soldiering and good leather
and parades that had been parades. But he did not
feel called upon to follow. He could not follow. He
was going up the line. . . .

He occupied himself with his mind. What was
it going to do? He cast back along his military his¬
tory: what had his mind done in similar moments
before? . . . But there had never been a similar mo¬
ment! There had been the sinister or repulsive busi¬
nesses of going up, getting over, standing to — even of
the casualty clearing-station! . . . But he had always
been physically keener, he had never been so depressed
or overwhelmed.

He said to the general:

“I recognise that I cannot stop in this command. I
regret it, for I have enjoyed having this unit. . . .
But does it necessarily mean the Vlth Battalion?”

He wondered what was his own motive at the mo¬
ment. Why had he asked the general that! . . . The
thing presented itself as pictures: getting down bulkily
from a high French train, at dawn. The light picked
out for you the white of large hunks of bread — half¬
loaves — being handed out to troops themselves duskily
invisible. . . . The ovals of light on the hats of English

279

D£0 mORE PARADES

troops: they were mostly West Countrymen. They
did not seem to want the bread much. ... A long
ridge of light above a wooded bank: then suddenly,
pervasively: a sound! ... For all the world as, shel¬
tering from rain in a cottager’s washhouse on the
moors, you hear the cottager’s clothes boiling in a cop¬
per . . . Bubble . . . bubble . . . bubbubbub . . .
bubble . . . Not terribly loud — but terribly demand¬
ing attention! . . . The Great Strafe! . . .

The general had said:

“If I could think of anything else to do with you,
I’d do it. . . . But all the extraordinary rows you’ve
got into. . . . They block me everywhere. . . . Do
you realize that I have requested General O’Hara to
suspend his functions until now? . . .”

It was amazing to Tietjens how the general mis¬
trusted his subordinates — as well as how he trusted
them! ... It was probably that that made him so
successful an officer. Be worked for by men that you
trust: but distrust them all the time — along certain
lines of frailty: liquor, women, money! . . . Well, he
had long knowledge of men!

He said:

“I admit, sir, that I misjudged General O’Hara. I
have said as much to Colonel Levin and explained
why.”

The general said with a gloating irony:

“A damn pretty pass to come to. ... You put a
general officer under arrest. . . . Then you say you
had misjudged him! ... I am not saying you were
not performing a duty. . . .” He went on to recount
the classical case of a subaltern, cited in King’s Reg¬
ulations, temp. William IV, who was court-martialled
and broken for not putting under arrest his colonel

280 MO MORE PARADES

who came drunk on to parade. ... He was exhibit¬
ing his sensuous delight in misplaced erudition.

Tietjens heard himself say with great slowness:

“I absolutely deny, sir, that I put General O’Hara
under arrest! I have gone into the matter very min¬
utely with Colonel Levin.”

The general burst out:

“By God! I had taken that woman to be a saint.
... I swear she is a saint. . .

Tietjens said:

“There is no accusation against Mrs. Tietjens, sir!”

The general said:

“By God, there is!”

Tietjens said:

“I am prepared to take all the blame, sir.”

The general said:

“You shan’t. ... I am determined to get to the
bottom of all this. ... You have treated your wife
damn badly. ... You admit to that. . . .”

Tietjens said:

“With great want of consideration, sir. . . .”

The general said:

“You have been living practically on terms of sep¬
aration from her for a number of years? You don’t
deny that that was on account of your owm mis¬
behaviour. For how many years?”

Tietjens said:

“I don’t know, sir. . . . Six or seven!”

The general said sharply:

“Think, then. ... It began when you admitted to
me that you had been sold up because you kept a girl
in a tobacco-shop? That was at Rye in 1912. . . .”

Tietjens said:

“We have not been on terms since 1912, sir.”

Of ORE PARADES 281

The general said:

“But why? . . . She’s a most beautiful woman.
She’s adorable. What could you want better? . . .
She’s the mother of your child. . .

Tietjens said:

“Is it necessary to go into all this, sir? . . . Our
differences were caused by ... by differences of tem¬
perament. She, as you say, is a beautiful and reckless
woman. . . . Reckless in an admirable way. I, on
the other hand . . .”

The general exclaimed:

“Yes! that’s just it. . . . What the hell are you?
. . . You’re not a soldier. You’ve got the makings of
a damn good soldier. You amaze me at times. Yet
you’re a disaster; you are a disaster to every one who
has to do with you. You are as conceited as a hog; you
are as obstinate as a bullock. . . . You drive me mad.
. . . And you have ruined the life of that beautiful
woman. . . . For I maintain she once had the disposi¬
tion of a saint. . . . Now: I’m waiting for your ex¬
planation ! ”

Tietjens said:

“In civilian life, sir, I was a statistician. Second
secretary to the Department of Statistics. . . .”

The general exclaimed convictingly:

“And they’ve thrown you out of that! Because of
the mysterious rows you made. . . .”

Tietjens said:

“Because, sir, I was in favour of the single com¬
mand. . . .”

The general began a long wrangle: “But why were
you? What the hell had it got to do with you?”
Couldn’t Tietjens have given the Department the sta¬
tistics they wanted — even if it meant faking them?

282 iMORE PARADES

What was discipline for if subordinates were to act on
their consciences? The home Government had wanted
statistics faked in order to dish the Allies. . . . Well
. . . Was Tietjens French or English? Every damn
thing Tietjens did . . . Every damn thing, made it
more impossible to do anything for him! With his
attainments he ought to be attached to the staff of the
French Commander-in-Chief. But that was forbidden
in his, Tietjens’, confidential report. There was an
underlined note in it to that effect. Where else, then,
in Heaven’s name, could Tietjens be sent to? He
looked at Tietjens with intent blue eyes:

“Where else, in God’s name ... I am not using the
Almighty’s name blasphemously . . . can you be sent
to? I know it’s probably death to send you up the
line — in your condition of health. And to poor Perry’s
Army. The Germans will be through it the minute the
weather breaks.”

He began again: “You understand: I’m not the
War Office. I can’t send any officer anywhere. I can’t
send you to Malta or India. Or to other commands in
France. I can send you home — in disgrace. I can
send you to your own battalion. On promotion! . . .
Do you understand my situation? ... I have no al¬
ternative.”

Tietjens said:

“Not altogether, sir.”

The general swallowed and wavered from side to
side. He said:

“For God’s sake, try to. ... I am genuinely con¬
cerned for you. I won’t — I’m damned if I will! — let
it appear that you’re disgraced. ... If you were Mc-
Kechnie himself I wouldn’t! The only really good jobs
I’ve got to give away are on my own staff. I can’t have

WO {MORE PARADES 283

you there. Because of the men. At the same time

• • •

He paused and said with a ponderous shyness:

“I believe there’s a God. ... I believe that, though
wrong may flourish, right will triumph in the end! . . .
If a man is innocent, his innocence will one day ap¬
pear. ... In a humble way I want to . . . help
Providence. ... I want some one to be able one day
to say: ‘General Campion, mho knew the ins and outs
of the affair . . .’ promoted you! In the middle of
it. . . .” He said: “It isn’t much. But it’s not
nepotism. I would do as much for any man in your
position.”

Tietjens said:

“It’s at least the act of a Christian gentleman!”

A certain lack-lustre joy appeared in the general’s
eyes. He said:

“I’m not used to this sort of situation. ... I hope
I’ve always tried to help my junior officers. . . . But
a case like this. . . .” He said:

“Damn it. . . . The general commanding the 9th
French Army is an intimate friend of mine. . . . But
in face of your confidential report — I can’t ask him
to ask for you. That’s blocked!”

Tietjens said:

“I do not propose, sir, at any rate in your eyes,
to pass as putting the interests of any power before
those of my own country. If you examine my con¬
fidential report you will find that the unfavourable
insertions are initialled G. D. . . . They are the ini¬
tials of a Major Drake. . . .”

The general said bewilderingly:

“Drake . . . Drake . . . I’ve heard the name.”

Tietjens said:

284

{MORE PARADES

“It doesn’t matter, sir. . . . Major Drake’s a gen¬
tleman who doesn’t like me. . . .”

The general said:

“There are so many. You don’t try to make your¬
self popular, I must say!”

Tietjens said to himself:

“The old fellow feels it! ... But he can hardly
expect me to tell him that Sylvia thinks Drake was the
father of my own son, and desires my ruin!” But of
course the old man would feel it. He, Tietjens, and
his wife Sylvia, were as near a son and daughter as
the old man had. The obvious answer to make to the
old man’s query as to where he, Tietjens, ought to be
sent was to remind him that his brother Mark had had
an order put through to the effect that Tietjens was to
be put in command of divisional transport. . . . Could
he remind the old man of that? Was it a thing one
could do?

Yet the idea of commanding divisional transport was
like a vision of Paradise to Tietjens. For two reasons:
it was relatively safe, being concerned with a lot of
horses . . . and the knowledge that he had that em¬
ployment would put Valentine Wannop’s mind at
rest.

Paradise! . . . But could one wangle out of a hard
into a soft job? Some other poor devil very likely
wanted it. On the other hand — think of Valentine
Wannop! He imagined her torture of mind, wander¬
ing about London, thinking of him in the very worst
spot of a doomed army. She would get to hear of that.
Sylvia would tell her ! He would bet Sylvia would ring
her up and tell her. Imagine, then, writing to Mark
to say that he was with the transport! Mark would
pass it on to the girl within half a minute. Why . - .

D£0 iMORE PARADES 285

he, Tietjens, would wire. He imagined himself scrib¬
bling the wire while the general talked and giving it to
an orderly the moment the talk was over. . . . But
could he put the idea into the old man’s head? Is it
done? . . . Would, say . . . say, an Anglican saint
do it?

And then . . . Was he up to the job? What about
the accursed obsession of O Nine Morgan that inter¬
mittently jumped on him? All the while he had been
riding Schomburg the day before, O Nine Morgan
had seemed to be just before the coffin-headed brute’s
off-shoulder. The animal must fall! ... He had had
the passionate impulse to pull up the horse. And all
the time a dreadful depression! A weight! In the
hotel last night he had nearly fainted over the thought
that Morgan might have been the man whose life he
had spared at Noircourt. ... It was getting to be a
serious matter! It might mean that there was a crack
in his, Tietjens’, brain. A lesion! If that was to go
on ... O Nine Morgan, dirty as he always was, and
with the mystified eyes of the subject races on his face,
rising up before his horse’s off-shoulder! But alive,
not with half his head cut away. ... If that was to
go on he would not be fit to deal with transport, which
meant a great deal of riding.

But he would chance that. . . . Besides, some damn
fool of a literary civilian had been writing passionate
letters to the papers insisting that all horses and mules
must be abolished in the army. . . . Because of their
pestilence-spreading dung! ... It might be decreed
by A.C.I. that no more horses were to be used! . . .
Imagine taking battalion supplies down by night with
motor lorries, which was what that genius desired to
see done! . . .

286

5^0 {MORE PARADES

He remembered once or twice — it must have been
in September, ’16 — having had the job of taking batta¬
lion transport down from Locre to B.H.Q., which were
in the chateau of Kemmell village. ... You muffled
every bit of metal you could think of: bits, trace-chains,
axles . . . and yet, whilst you hardly breathed, in the
thick darkness some damn thing would always chink
and jolt: beef tins made a noise of old iron. . . . And
bang, after the long whine, would come the German
shell, registered exactly on to the corner of the road
where it went down by the shoulder of the hill: where
the placards were ordering you not to go more than two
men together. . . . Imagine doing it with lorries, that
could be heard five miles away! . . . The battalion
would go pretty short of rations! . . . The same anti-
chevaline genius had emitted the sentiment that he had
rather the Allies lost the war than that cavalry should
distinguish themselves in any engagement! ... A
wonderful passion for the extermination of dung . . .!
Or perhaps this hatred of the horse was social. . . .
Because the cavalry wear long moustaches dripping
with Macassar oil and breakfast off caviare, chocolate
and Pommery Greno they must be abolished! . . .
Something like that. ... He exclaimed: “By God!
How my mind wanders ! How long will it go on?” He
said: “I am at the end of my tether.” He had missed
what the general had said for some time.

The general said:

“Well. Has he?”

Tietjens said:

“I didn’t catch, sir!”

“Are you deaf?” the general asked. “I’m sure I
speak plain enough. You’ve just said there are no
horses attached to this camp. I asked you if there is

{MORE PARADES 287

not a horse for the colonel commanding the depot. . . „
A German horse, I understand ! ”

Tietjens said to himself:

“Great heavens! I’ve been talking to him. What
in the world about?” It was as if his mind were falling
off a hillside. He said:

“Yes, sir . . . Schomburg. But as that’s a German
prisoner, captured on the Marne, it is not on our
strength. It is the private property of the colonel.
I ride it myself. . . .”

The general exclaimed dryly:

“You would. . . .” He added more dryly still:
“Are you aware that there is a hell of a strafe put in
against you by a R.A.S.C. second-lieutenant called
Hotchkiss? . . .”

Tietjens said quickly:

“If it’s over Schomburg, sir . . . it’s a washout.
Lieutenant Hotchkiss has no more right to give orders
about him than as to where I shall sleep. . . . And I
would rather die than subject any horse for which I
am responsible to the damnable torture Hotchkiss and
that swine Lord Beichan want to inflict on service
horses. . . .”

The general said maleficently:

“It looks as if you damn well will die on that
account!”

He added: “You’re perfectly right to object to
wrong treatment of horses. But in this case your
objection blocks the only other job open to you.” He
quietened himself a little. “You are probably not
aware,” he went on, “that your brother Mark . . .”

Tietjens said:

“Yes, I am aware . . .”

The general said: “Do you know that the 19th

288 !N?0 {MORE PARADES

Division to which your brother wants you sent is at¬
tached to Fourth Army now— and it’s Fourth Army
horses that Hotchkiss is to play with? . . . How could
I send you there to be under his orders?”

Tietjens said:

“That’s perfectly correct, sir. There is nothing else
that you can do. . . .” He was finished. There was
now nothing left but to find out how his mind was
going to take it. He wished they could go to his
cook-houses!

The general said:

“What was I saying? . . . I’m dreadfully tired.
. . . No one could stand this. . . He drew from
inside his tunic a lapis-lazuli coloured, small be-cor-
oneted note-case and selected from it a folded paper
that he first looked at and then slipped between his belt
and his tunic. He said: “On top of all the respon¬
sibility I have to bear ! ” He asked: “Has it occurred
to you that, if I’m of any service to the country, your
taking up my energy — sapping my energy over your
affairs! — is aiding your country’s enemies? ... I can
only afford four hours’ sleep as it is. . . . I’ve got some
questions to ask you. . . .” He referred to the slip
of paper from his belt, folded it again and again
slipped it into his belt.

Tietjens’ mind missed a notch again. ... It was
the fear of the mud that was going to obsess him. Yet,
curiously, he had never been under heavy fire in mud.
. . . You would think that that would not have
obsessed him. But in his ear he had just heard uttered
in a whisper of intense weariness, the words: Es ist
nicht zu ertragen ; es ist das dasz uns verloren hat . . .
words in German, of utter despair, meaning: It is un¬
bearable: it is that that has ruined us. . . . The mud!

&C0 ZMORE PARADES 289

. . . He had heard those words, standing amidst vol¬
cano craters of mud, amongst ravines, monstrosities of
slime, cliffs and distances, all of slime. ... He had
been going, for curiosity or instruction, from Verdun
where he had been attached to the French — on a holiday
afternoon when nothing was doing, with a guide, to
visit one of the outlying forts. . . . Deaumont? . . .
No, Douaumont. . . . Taken from the enemy about a
week before. . . . When would that be? He had lost
all sense of chronology. ... In November. ... A
beginning of some November. . . . With a miracle of
sunshine: not a cloud: the mud towering up shut you
in intimately with a £ky that ached for limpidity. . . .
And the slime had moved . . . following a French
bombadier who was strolling along eating nuts, dis¬
reputably, his shoulders rolling. . . . Deserteurs. . . .
The moving slime was German deserters. ... You
could not see them: the leader of them — an officer! —
had his glasses so thick with mud that you could not see
the colour of his eyes, and his half-dozen decorations
were like the beginnings of swallows’ nests, his beard
like stalactites. ... Of the other men you could
only see the eyes — extraordinarily vivid: mostly blue
like the sky! . . . Deserters! Led by an officer! Of
the Hamburg Regiment! As if an officer of the Buffs
had gone over! ... It was incredible. . . . And that
was what the officer had said as he passed: not shame¬
facedly, but without any humanity left in him . . .
Done! . . . Those moving saurians compacted of slime
kept on passing him afterwards, all the afternoon. . . .
And he could not help picturing their immediate ante¬
cedents for two months. ... In advanced pill-boxes.

. . . No, they didn’t have pill-boxes then. ... In ad¬
vanced pockets of mud, in dreadful solitude amongst

290

D£0 {MORE PARADES

those ravines. . . . suspended in eternity, at the last
day of the world. And it had horribly shocked him to
hear again the German language a rather soft voice, a
little suety. . . . Like an obscene whisper. . . . The
voice obviously of the damned: hell could hold nothing
curious for those poor beasts. . . . His French guide
had said sardonically: On dir ait V Inferno de Dante!
. . . Well, those Germans were getting back on him.
They were now to become an obsession! A complex,
they said nowadays. . . . The general said coolly:

“I presume you refuse to answer?”

That shook him cruelly.

He said desperately:

“I had to end what I took to be an unbearable posi¬
tion for both parties. In the interests of my son!”
Why in the world had he said that? . . . He was going
to be sick. It came back to him that the general
had been talking of his separation from Sylvia. Last
night that had happened. He said: “I may have been
right: I may have been wrong. . . .”

The general said icily:

“If you don’t choose to go into it. . .

Tietjens said:

“I would prefer not to. . .

The general said:

“There is no end to this. . . . But there are ques¬
tions it’s my duty to ask. ... If you do not wish to
go into your marital relations, I cannot force you. . . .
But, damn it, are you sane? Are you responsible?
Do you intend to get Miss Wannop to live with you
before the war is over? Is she, perhaps, here, in this
town, now? Is that your reason for separating from
Sylvia? Now, of all times in the world!”

Tietjens said:

291

D£0 {MORE PARADES

“No, sir. I ask you to believe that I have absolutely
no relations with that young lady. None! I have no
intention of having any. None! . .

The general said:

“I believe that!”

“Circumstances last night,” Tietjens said, “con¬
vinced me suddenly, there, on the spot, that I had been
wronging my wife. ... I had been putting a strain on
the lady that was unwarrantable. It humiliates me to
have to say it! I had taken a certain course for the
sake of the future of our child. But it was an atro¬
ciously wrong course. We ought to have separated
years ago. It has led to the lady’s pulling the strings
of all these shower-baths. . . .”

The general said:

“Pulling the . . .”

Tietjens said:

“It expresses it, sir. . . . Last night was nothing
but pulling the string of a shower-bath. Perfectly
justifiable. I maintain that it was perfectly justi¬
fiable.”

The general said:

“Then why have you given her Groby? . . . You’re
not a little soft, are you? . . . You don’t imagine
you’ve . . . say, got a mission? Or that you’re an¬
other person? . . . That you have to . . . to for¬
give. . . .” He took off his pretty hat and wiped his
forehead with a tiny cambric handkerchief. He said:
“Your poor mother was a little . . .”

He said suddenly:

“To-night when you are coming to my dinner . . .
I hope you’ll be decent. Why do you so neglect your
personal appearance? Your tunic is a disgusting
spectacle. . . .”

292

D£0 {MORE PARADES

Tietjens said:

“I had a better tunic, sir . . . but it has been ruined
by the blood of the man who was killed here last
night. . .

The general said:

“You don’t say you have only two tunics? . . .
Have you no mess clothes?”

Tietjens said:

“Yes, sir, I’ve my blue things. I shall be all right
for to-night. . . . But almost everything else I pos¬
sessed was stolen from my kit when I was in hospital.
. . . Even Sylvia’s two pair of sheets. . . .”

“But hang it all,” the general exclaimed, “you don’t
mean to say you’ve spaffled all your father left
you?”

Tietjens said:

“I thought fit to refuse what my father left me
owing to the way it was left. . . .”

The general said:

“But, good God! . . . Read that!” He tossed the
small sheet of paper at which he had been looking
across the table. It fell face downwards. Tietjens
read, in the minute handwriting of the general’s:

“Colonel’s horse: Sheets: Jesus Christ: Wannop
girl: Socialism?”

The general said irritably:

“The other side . . . the other side. . . .”

The other side of the paper displayed the words in
large capitals: WORKERS OF THE WORLD, a
wood-cut of a sickle and some other objects. Then
high treason for a page.

The general said:

“Have you ever seen anything like that before? Do
you know what it is?”

293

C^CO {MORE PARADES

Tietjens answered:

“Yes, sir. I sent that to you. To your Intelligence.

• • •

The general thumped both hte fists violently on the
army blanket:

“You . . .” he said. “It’s incomprehensible. . . .
It’s incredible. . .

Tietjens said:

“No, sir. . . . You sent out an order asking com¬
manders of units to ascertain what attempts were being
made by Socialists to undermine the discipline of their
other ranks. ... I naturally asked my sergeant-
major, and he produced this sheet, which one of the
men had given to him as a curiosity. It had been
handed to the man in the street in London. You can
see my initials on the top of the sheet!”

The general said:

“You . . . you’ll excuse me, but you’re not a Social¬
ist yourself? . . .”

Tietjens said:

“I knew you were working round to that, sir: But
I’ve no politics that did not disappear in the eighteenth
century. You, sir, prefer the seventeenth!”

“Another shower-bath, I suppose,” the general said.

“Of course,” Tietjens said, “if it’s Sylvia that called
me a Socialist, it’s not astonishing. I’m a Tory of such
an extinct type that she might take me for anything.
The last megatherium. She’s absolutely to be ex¬
cused. . . .”

The general was not listening. He said:

“What was wrong with the way your father left his
money to you? . . .”

“My father,” Tietjens said — the general saw his jaw
stiffen — “committed suicide because a fellow called

294 5^0 {MORE PARADES

Ruggles told him that I was . . . what the French
called maquereau ... I can’t think of the English
word. My father’s suicide was not an act that can
be condoned. A gentleman does not commit suicide
when he has descendants. It might influence my boy’s
life very disastrously. . . .”

The general said:

“I can’t ... I can’t get to the bottom of all this.
. . . What in the world did Ruggles want to go and
tell your father that for? . . . What are you going to
do for a living after the war? They won’t take you
back into your office, will they?”

Tietjens said:

“No, sir. The Department will not take me back.
Every one who has served in this war will be a marked
man for a long time after it is over. That’s proper
enough. We’re having our fun now.”

The general said:

“You say the wildest things.”

Tietjens answered:

“You generally find the things I say come true, sir.
Could we get this over? Ruggles told my father what
he did because it is not a good thing to belong to the
seventeenth or eighteenth centuries in the twentieth.
Or really, because it is not good to have taken one’s
public-school’s ethical system seriously. I am really,
sir, the English public schoolboy. That’s an
eighteenth-century product. What with the love of
truth that — God help me! — they rammed into me at
Clifton and the belief Arnold forced upon Rugby that
the vilest of sins — the vilest of all sins — is to peach to
the head master ! That’s me, sir. Other men get over
their schooling. I never have. I remain adolescent.
These things are obsessions with me. Complexes, sir ! ”

3\C0 {MORE PARADES 295

The general said:

“All this seems to be very wild. . . . What’s this
about peaching to a head master?”

Tietjens said:

“For a swan song, it’s not wild, sir. You’re asking
for a swan song. I am to go up into the line so that
the morals of the troops in your command may not be
contaminated by the contemplation of my marital in¬
felicities.”

The general said:

“You don’t want to go back to England, do you?”

Tietjens exclaimed:

“Certainly not! Very certainly not! I can never
go home. I have to go underground somewhere. If
I went back to England there would be nothing for
me but going underground by suicide.”

The general said:

“You see all that? I can give you testimonials.

Tietjens asked:

“Who couldn’t see that it’s impossible?”

The general said:

“But . . . suicide! You won’t do that. As you
said: think of your son.”

Tietjens said:

“No, sir. I shan’t do that. But you see how bad
for one’s descendants suicide is. That is why I do not
forgive my father. Before he did it I should never
have contemplated the idea. Now I have contemplated
it. That’s a weakening of the moral fibre. It’s con¬
templating a fallacy as a possibility. For suicide is no
remedy for a twisted situation of a psychological kind.
It is for bankruptcy. Or for military disaster. For
the man of action, not for the thinker. Creditors’ meet-

296

M O MORE PARADES

ings wipe the one out. Military operations sweep on.
But my problem will remain the same whether I’m here
or not. For it’s insoluble. It’s the whole problem of
the relations of the sexes.”

The general said:

“Good God! . . ”

Tietjens said:

“No, sir, I’ve not gone off my chump. That’s my
problem! . . . But I’m a fool to talk so much. . . .
It’s because I don’t know what to say.”

The general sat staring at the tablecloth: his face
was suffused with blood. He had the appearance of a
man in monstrous ill-humour. He said:

“You had better say what you want to say. What
the devil do you mean? . . . What’s this all about?
• • •

Tietjens said:

“I’m enormously sorry, sir. It’s difficult to make
myself plain.”

The general said:

“Neither of us do. What is language for? What
the hell is language for? We go round and round. I
suppose I’m an old fool who cannot understand your
modern ways . . . But you’re not modern. I’ll do you
that justice. . . . That beastly little McKechnie is
modern. ... I shall ram him into your divisional-
transport job, so that he won’t incommode you in your
battalion. . . . Do you understand what the little
beast did? He got leave to go and get a divorce. And
then did not get a divorce. That’s modernism. He
said he had scruples. I understand that he and his
wife and . . . some dirty other fellow . . . slept
three in a bed. That’s modern scruples. . . .”

Tietjens said:

P WORE PARADES 297

“No, sir, it’s not really. . . . But what is a man to
do if his wife is unfaithful to him?”

The general said as if it were an insult:

“Divorce the harlot! Or live with her! . . Only
a beast, he went on, would expect a woman to live all
her life alone in a cockloft! She’s bound to die. Or
go on the streets. . . . What sort of a fellow wouldn’t
see that? Was there any sort of beast who’d expect a
woman to live . . . with a man beside her. . . . Why,
she’d . . . she’d be bound to. . . . He’d have to take
the consequences of whatever happened. The general
repeated: “Whatever happened! If she pulled all the
strings of all the shower-baths in the world!”

Tietjens said:

“Still, sir . . . there are . . . there used to be . . .
in families of . . . position ... a certain . . .” He
stopped.

The general said:

“Well . . .”

Tietjens said:

“On the part of the man ... a certain . . . Call it
. . . parade!”

The general said:

“Then there had better be no more parades. . . .”
He said: “Damn it! ... Beside us, all women are
saints. . . . Think of what child-bearing is. I know
the world. . . . Who would stand that? . . . You?

. . . I . . . . I’d rather be the last poor devil in
Perry’s lines!”

He looked at Tietjens with a sort of injurious cun¬
ning:

“Why don’t you divorce?” he asked.

Panic came over Tietjens. He knew it would be his
last panic of that interview. No brain could stand

298

MORE PARADES

more. Fragments of scenes of fighting, voices, names,
went before his eyes and ears. Elaborate problems.
. . . The whole map of the embattled world ran out in
front of him — as large as a field. An embossed map
in greenish papier mache — a ten-acre field of embossed
papier mache : with the blood of O Nine Morgan blur¬
ring luminously over it. Years before . . . How many
months? . . . Nineteen, to be exact, he had sat on
some tobacco plants on the Mont de Kats. . . . No,
the Montagne Noire. In Belgium. . . . What had he
been doing? . . . Trying to get the lie of the land. . . .
No. . . . Waiting to point out positions to some fat
home general who had never come. The Belgian pro¬
prietor of the tobacco plants had arrived, and had
screamed his head off over the damaged plants. . . .

But, up there you saw the whole war. . . . Infinite
miles away, over the sullied land that the enemy forces
held: into Germany proper. Presumably you could
breathe in Germany proper. . . . Over your right
shoulder you could see a stump of a tooth. The Cloth
Hall at Ypres: at an angle of 50° below. . . . Dark
lines behind it. . . . The German trenches before
Wytschaete! . . .

That was before the great mines had blown Wyt¬
schaete to hell. . . .

But— every half-minute by his wrist-watch — white
puffs of cotton-wool existed on the dark lines — the
German trenches before Wytschaete. Our artillery
practice. . . . Good shooting. Jolly good shooting!

Miles and miles away to the left . . . beneath the
haze of light that, on a clouded day, the sea threw off,
a shaft of sunlight fell, and was reflected in a grey
blur. ... It was the glass roofs of a great airplane
shelter !

299

3^0 {MORE PARADES

A great plane, the largest he had then seen, was
moving over, behind his back, with four little planes
as an escort. . . . Over the vast slag-heaps by
Bethune. . . . High, purplish-blue heaps, like the
steam domes of engines or the breasts of women. . . .
Bluish purple. More blue than purple. . . . Like all
Franco-Belgian Gobelins tapestry. . . . And all quiet.
. . . Under the vast pall of quiet cloud! . . .

There were shells dropping in Poperinghe. . . .
Five miles out, under his nose. . . . The shells
dropped. White vapour rose and ran away in plumes.
. . . What sort of shells? . . . There were twenty dif¬
ferent kinds of shells. . . .

The Huns were shelling Poperinghe! A senseless
cruelty. It was five miles behind the line! Prussian
brutality. . . . There were two girls who kept a tea-
shop in Poperinghe. . . . High coloured. . . . Gen¬
eral Plumer had liked them ... a fine old general.
. . . The shells had killed them both . . . Any man
might have slept with either of them with pleasure and
profit. . . . Six thousand of H.M. officers must have
thought the same about those high-coloured girls. Good
girls! . . . But the Hun shells got them. . . . What
sort of fate was that? ... To be desired by six thou¬
sand men and smashed into little gobbets of flesh by
Hun shells?

It appeared to be mere Prussianism — the senseless
cruelty of the Him! — to shell Poperinghe. An inno¬
cent town with a tea-shop five miles behind Ypres.
. . . Little noiseless plumes of smoke rising under the
quiet blanketing of the pale maroon skies, with the
haze from the aeroplane shelters, and the great aero¬
planes over the Bethune slag-heaps. . . . What a
dreadful name — Bethune. . . .

300

ZA CO {MORE PARADES

Probably, however, the Germans had heard that we
were massing men in Poperinghe. It was reasonable
to shell a town where men were being assembled. . . .
Or we might have been shelling one of their towns with
an Army H.Q. in it. So they shelled Poperinghe in the
silent grey day. . . .

That was according to the rules of the service. . . .
General Campion, accepting with equanimity what
German airplanes did to the hospitals, camps, stables,
brothels, theatres, boulevards, chocolate stalls and
hotels of his town would have been vastly outraged if
Hun planes had dropped bombs on his private lodgings.
. . . The rules of war! ... You spare, mutually,
each other’s headquarters and blow to pieces girls that
are desired by six thousand men apiece. . . .

That had been nineteen months before! . . . Now,
having lost so much emotion, he saw the embattled
world as a map. ... An embossed map of greenish
papier mache. The blood of O Nine Morgan was blur¬
ring luminously over it. At the extreme horizon was
territory labelled White Ruthenians ! Who the devil
Were those poor wretches?

He exclaimed to himself: “By heavens! Is this
epilepsy?” He prayed: “Blessed saints, get me spared
that!” He exclaimed: “No, it isn’t! . . . I’ve com¬
plete control of my mind. My uppermost mind.” He
:said to the general:

“I can’t divorce, sir. I’ve no grounds.”

The general said:

“Don’t lie. You know what Thurston knows. Do
you mean that you have been guilty of contributory
misconduct. . . . Whatever it is? And can’t divorce!
I don’t believe it.”

Tietjens said to himself:

D£0 (MORE PARADES 301

“ Why the devil am I so anxious to shield that whore?
It’s not reasonable. It is an obsession!”

White Ruthenians are miserable peoples to the south
of Lithuania. You don’t know whether they incline
to the Germans or to the Poles. The Germans don’t
even know. . . . The Germans were beginning to take
their people out of the line where we were weak: they
were going to give them proper infantry training. That
gave him, Tietjens, a chance. They would not come
over strong for at least two months. It meant, though,
a great offensive in the spring. Those fellows had
sense. In the poor, beastly trenches the Tommies
knew nothing but how to chuck bombs. Both sides
did that. But the Germans were going to cure it!
Stood chucking bombs at each other from forty yards.
The rifle was obsolete! Ha! ha! Obsolete! . . . The
civilian psychology!

The general said:

“No I don’t believe it. I know you did not keep
any girl in any tobacco-shop. I remember every word
you said at Rye in 1912. I wasn’t sure then. I am
now. You tried to let me think it. You had shut up
your house because of your wife’s misbehaviour. You
let me believe you had been sold up. You weren’t
sold up at all.”

. . . Why should it be the civilian psychology to
chuckle with delight, uproariously, when the imbecile
idea was promulgated that the rifle was obsolete? Why
should public opinion force on the War Office a train¬
ing-camp course that completely cut out any thorough
instruction in the rifle and communication drill? It
was queer. ... It was of course disastrous. Queer.
Not altogether mean. Pathetic, too. . . .

“Love of truth!” the general said. “Doesn’t that

302 ZA CO {MORE PARADES

include a hatred for white lies? No; I suppose it
doesn’t, or your servants could not say you were not
at home. . .

. . . Pathetic! Tietjens said to himself. Naturally
the civilian population wanted soldiers to be made to
look like fools: and to be done in. They wanted the
war won by men who would at the end be either humil¬
iated or dead. Or both. Except, naturally, their own
cousins or fiancees’ relatives. That was what it came
to. That was what it meant when important gentle¬
men said that they had rather the war were lost than
that cavalry should gain any distinction in it! . . .
But it was partly the simple, pathetic illusion of the
day that great things could only be done by new inven¬
tions. You extinguished the Horse, invented something
very simple and became God ! That is the real pathetic
fallacy. You fill a flower-pot with gunpowder and
chuck it in the other fellow’s face, and heigh presto!
the war is won. All the soldiers fall down dead! And
You: you who forced the idea on the reluctant military,
are the Man that Won the War. You deserve all the
women in the world. And . . . you get them! Once
the cavalry are out of the way! . . .

The general was using the words:

“Head master!” It brought Tietjens completely
back.

He said collectedly:

“Really, sir, why this strafe of yours is so terribly
long is that it embraces the whole of life.”

The general said:

“You’re not going to drag a red herring across the
trail. ... I say you regarded me as a head master in
1912. Now I am your commanding officer — which is
the same thing. You .must not peach to me. That’s

303

£MORE PARADES

what you call the Arnold of Rugby touch. . . . But
who was it said: Magna est veritas et prev . . . Prev
something?”

Tietjens said:

“I don’t remember, sir.”

The general said:

“What was the secret grief your mother had? In
1912? She died of it. She wrote to me just before
her death and said she had great troubles. And
begged me to look after you, very specially! Why did
she do that?” He paused and meditated. He asked:
“How do you define Anglican sainthood? The other
fellows have canonizations, all shipshape like Sand¬
hurst examinations. But us Anglicans . . . I’ve heard
fifty persons say your mother was a saint. She was.
But why?”

Tietjens said:

“It’s the quality of harmony, sir. The quality of
being in harmony with your own soul. God having
given you your own soul you are then in harmony with
Heaven.”

The general said:

“Ah, that’s beyond me. ... I suppose you will
refuse any money I leave you in my will?”

Tietjens said:

“Why, no, sir.”

The general said:

“But you refused your father’s money. Because he
believed things against you. What’s the difference?”

Tietjens said:

“One’s friends ought to believe that one is a gentle¬
man. Automatically. That is what makes one and
them in harmony. Probably your friends are your
friends because they look at situations automatically

304 {MORE PARADES

as you look at them. . . . Mr. Ruggles knew that I
was hard up. He envisaged the situation. If he were
hard up, what would he do? Make a living out of the
immoral earnings of women. . . . That translated into
the Government circles in which he lives means selling
your wife or mistress. Naturally he believed that I
was the sort of fellow to sell my wife. So that’s what
he told my father. The point is, my father should not
have believed him.”

“But I . . .” the general said.

Tietjens said:

“You never believed anything against me, sir.”

The general said:

“I know I’ve damn well worried myself to death over
you . .

Tietjens was sentimentally at rest, still with wet
eyes. He was walking near Salisbury *in a grove, re¬
garding long pastures and ploughlands running to dark,
high elms from which, embowered. . . . Embowered
was the word! — peeped the spire of George Herbert’s
church. . . . One ought to be a seventeenth-century
parson at the time of the renaissance of Anglican
saintliness . . . who, wrote, perhaps poems. No, not
poems. Prose. The statelier vehicle!

That was home-sickness! . . . He himself was
never to go home!

The general said:

“Look here. . . . Your father. . . . I’m concerned
about your father. . . . Didn’t Sylvia perhaps tell him
some of the things that distressed him?”

Tietjens said distinctly:

“No, sir. That responsibility cannot be put on
to Sylvia. My father chose to believe things that were
said against me by a perfect — or a nearly perfect —

305

^ O MORE PARADES

stranger. . . .” He added: “As a matter of fact,
Sylvia and my father were not on any sort of terms.
I don’t believe they exchanged two words for the last
five years of my father’s life.”

The general’s eyes were fixed with an extreme hard¬
ness on Tietjens’. He watched Tietjens’ face, begin¬
ning with the edges round the nostrils, go chalk white.
He said: “He knows he’s given his wife away! . . .
Good God!” With his face colourless, Tietjens’ eyes
of porcelain-blue stuck out extraordinarily. The gen¬
eral thought: “What an ugly fellow! His face is all
crooked!” They remained looking at each other.

In the silence the voices of men talking over the
game of House came as a murmur to them. A rudi¬
mentary card game monstrously in favour of the
dealer. When you heard voices going on like that
you knew they were playing House. ... So they had
had their dinners.

The general said:

“It isn’t Sunday, is it?”

Tietjens said:

“No, sir; Thursday, the seventeenth, I think, of
January. . . .”

The general said:

“Stupid of me. . . .”

The men’s voices had reminded him of church bells
on a Sunday. And of his youth. ... He was sitting
beside Mrs. Tietjens’ hammock under the great cedar
at the corner of the stone house at Groby. The wind
being from the east-north-east the bells of Middles¬
brough came to them faintly. Mrs. Tietjens was
thirty; he himself thirty; Tietjens — the father — thirty-
five or so. A most powerful, quiet man. A wonderful
landowner. Like his predecessors for generations. It

306

0\ CO {MORE PARADES

was not from him that this fellow got his . . . his . . .
his what? . . . Was it mysticism? . . . Another word!
He himself home on leave from India: his head full
of polo. Talking for hours about points in ponies with
Tietjens’ father, who was a wonderful hand with a
horse. . . . But this fellow was much more wonder¬
ful! ... Well, he got that from the sire, not the dam!

. . . He and Tietjens continued to look at each other.
It was as if they were hypnotized. The men’s voices
went on in a mournful cadence. The general supposed
that he too must be pale. He said to himself: “This
fellow’s mother died of a broken heart in 1912. The
father committed suicide five years after. He had not
spoken to the son’s wife for four or five years! That
takes us back to 1912. . . . Then, when I strafed him
in Rye, the wife was in France with Perowne.”

He looked down at the blanket on the table. He
intended again to look up at Tietjens’ eyes with
ostentatious care. That was his technique with men.
He was a successful general because he knew men.
He knew that all men will go to hell over three things:
alcohol, money . . . and sex. This fellow apparently
hadn’t. Better for him if he had! He thought:

“It’s all gone . . . mother! father! Groby! This
fellow’s down and out. It’s a bit thick.”

He thought:

“But he’s right to do as he is doing.”

He prepared to look at Tietjens. ... He stretched
out a sudden, ineffectual hand. Sitting on his beef-
case, his hands on his knees, Tietjens had lurched. A
sudden lurch — as an old house lurches when it is hit
by a H.E. shell. It stopped at that. Then he righted
himself. He continued to stare direct at the general.

{MORE PARADES 307

The general looked carefully back. He said — very
carefully too:

“In case I decide to contest West Cleveland, it is
your wish that I should make Groby my headquar¬
ters?”

Tietjens said:

“I beg, sir, that you will!”

It was as if they both heaved an enormous sigh of
relief. The general said:

“Then I need not keep you. . . .”

Tietjens stood on his feet, wanly, but with his heels
together.

The general also rose, settling his belt. He said:

“. . . You can fall out.”

Tietjens said:

“My cook-houses, sir. . . . Sergeant-Cook Case
will be very disappointed. . . . He told me that you
couldn’t find anything wrong if I gave him ten minutes
to prepare. . . .”

The general said:

“Case. . . . Case. . . . Case was in the drums
when we were at Delhi. He ought to be at least Quar¬
termaster by now. . . . But he had a woman he called
his sister . . .”

Tietjens said:

“He still sends money to his sister.”

The general said:

“. . . He went absent over her- when he was colour-
sergeant and was reduced to the ranks. . . . Twenty
years ago that must be! ... Yes, I’ll see your din¬
ners!”

In the cook-houses, brilliantly accompanied by Colo¬
nel Levin, the cook-house spotless with limed walls

308

5^0 MORE PARADES

and mirrors that were the tops of camp-cookers, the
general, Tietjens at his side, walked between goggle-
eyed men in white who stood to attention holding
ladles. Their eyes bulged, but the corners of their
lips curved because they liked the general and his
beautifully unconcerned companions. The cook-house
was like a cathedral’s nave, aisles being divided off
by the pipes of stoves. The floor was of coke-brise
shining under french polish and turpentine.

The building paused, as when a godhead descends.
In breathless focusing of eyes the godhead, frail and
shining, walked with short steps up to a high-priest
who had a walrus moustache and, with seven medals
on his Sunday tunic, gazed away into eternity. The
general tapped the sergeant’s Good Conduct ribbon
with the heel of his crop. All stretched ears heard
him say:

“How’s your sister, Case? . . .”

Gazing away, the sergeant said:

“I’m thinking of making her Mrs. Case . .

Slightly leaving him, in the direction of high, var¬
nished, pitch-pine panels, the general said:

“I’ll recommend you for a Quartermaster’s commis¬
sion any day you wish. . . . Do you remember Sir
Garnet inspecting field kitchens at Quetta?”

All the white tubular beings with global eyes re¬
sembled the pierrots of a child’s Christmas nightmare.
The general said: “Stand at ease, men. . . . Stand
easy!” They moved as white objects move in a child¬
ish dream. It was all childish. Their eyes rolled.

Sergeant Case gazed away into infinite distance.

“My sister would not like it, sir,” he said. “I’m
better off as a first-class warrant officer!”

With his light step the shining general went swiftly

309

3\c O {MORE PARADES

to the varnished panels in the eastern aisle of the
cathedral. The white figure beside them became in¬
stantly tubular, motionless and global-eyed. On the
panels were painted: tea! sugar! salt! curry pdr!
flour! pepper!

The general tapped with the heel of his crop on the
locker-panel labelled pepper: the top, right-hand
locker-panel. He said to the tubular, global-eyed white
figure beside it: “Open that, will you, my man? . .

To Tietjens this was like the sudden bursting out of
the regimental quick-step, as after a funeral with mili¬
tary honours the band and drums march away, back to
barracks.

Date Due

:

- ^ J

*'■ t~ p 1 c

Lb i o

390

PR 6011. 053 N6 r1

Hord. Ford Madox, 1873-19 nidiinmn

No. mo ejrarades : a novel / by 01°130 000

0 1163 0049647 2

TRENT UNIVERSITY

PR6011

Ford, Ford Madox, 1873-1930
1,0 more parades. 9‘

~UED TO

..a